Karuna means 'pity' in Sanskrit. Sonia Gandhi must be wondering when Heaven shall show her a little compassion. Or, for that matter, whether she shall ever be free of 'Karuna' earthly style...
The first 'Karuna' to plague her is, of course, K Karunakaran. The second was the house that served as Ajit Jogi's official residence while he served as chief minister of Chhattisgarh. But the veteran from Kerala comes from a generation of giants; there is nothing mean in his pursuit of A K Antony, it has been an open vendetta fought in the grand manner. There has always been just a whiff of sulphur about Ajit Jogi, a hint of matters best left unseen. But he has now done something that leaves me profoundly depressed, a feat that few Congressmen have achieved since the days of the Emergency.
If there is one thing that India did really well, it is elections. And now here comes Ajit 'Moneybags' Jogi telling us, in effect, that hee-hee-hee, none of it really matters because he can overturn the results by suborning legislators. Even worse, the behaviour of his erstwhile party, the Congress (I), suggests that the Congress high command does not understand how far the party has sunk.
Most of the attention has revolved around the veracity of the notorious audio tape, a matter which, to my mind, is really quite irrelevant. What shall we learn if the matter comes up before a court? One set of forensic experts shall swear that the tape is genuine, the other side shall argue that it could have been forged. At the end of the day we shall be precisely where started, with a voice that could be that of Jogi. There, are, however, two damning pieces of evidence which prove Ajit Jogi's guilt.
The first is a letter written by Ajit Jogi in his own hand. In this epistle -- which Jogi has publicly accepted as his own -- he informs the governor of Chhattisgarh that the 37 Congress legislators in the Vidhan Sabha shall back a break-away faction from the Bharatiya Janata Party in the name of giving the state an Adivasi chief minister. Do you get it? Here is a man plotting to entice defectors within 24 hours of an election result that had just gone decisively against his own party!
The second is the behaviour of the Congress 'high command'. When the scandal broke, Ambika Soni¹s immediate reaction was to play for time. Within the hour, however, she was back saying that the chief minister had been suspended with immediate effect from primary membership of the Congress (I). Ambika Sonia may be Sonia Gandhi¹s political secretary and one of the office-bearers of the Congress (I), but that certainly doesn¹t give her the authority to take such a decision. Given the traditions of the Congress (I),
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