The Congress party's chief political troubleshooter, Pranab Mukherjee has been informally appointed the "chairman of the party's group of ministers on alliances" for the coming Lok Sabha elections by Congress president Sonia Gandhi.
While Pranab Mukherjee formally heads over 50 GOMs in the government on various issues, this one comes with a difference. It is a party brief where he has been authorized by the leadership to hold consultations with state chief ministers and other leaders on existing alliances, prospective alliances and wherever the party would be fighting the elections alone. He would be holding consultations, come to a decisive point in the discussions and then take the approval of the congress president before a final seal of approval or disapproval is put on the decision.
The Union external affairs minister spent the last two days dealing with domestic issues. He had long and detailed discussions with the Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister, Y S Rajshekhar Reddy, discussing the coming parliamentary and assembly elections which would be held together in April-May. The Congress would be going alone in the polls, there would be no second state reorganization commission and the party has decided on a firm no for Telangana. It is the line of Rajshekhar Reddy which has been agreed upon by the leadership.
Late on Monday evening, Mukherjee began discussions with senior Congress leaders from Maharashtra including the chief minister Ashok Chavan and the pradesh Congress committee president Manik Rao Thakre on the alliance talks with the Nationalist Congress Party which are likely to begin soon. The Congress has formed a six-member committee consisting of Ashok Chavan, Manikrao Thakre, Sushil Kumar Shinde, Vilasrao Deshmukh, Kripashanker Singh and Gurudas Kamat to hold discussions with NCP leaders on seat sharing for the Lok Sabha polls.
Before the committee goes into talks with the NCP, the leaders have come to Delhi to get a full brief from Mukherjee and to explain to him the situation in the state and how many seats the Congress could comfortably negotiate since NCP leader Sharad Pawar also wants to include the Samajwadi Party and the Republican Party of India in the alliance. It is learnt that they are going back with preliminary guidelines on how to handle the tough bargaining of Pawar and his men. Also present at the meeting were defence minister A.K.Antony who is in charge of Maharashtra and Ahmed Patel the Congress president's political secretary.
With President's Rule imposed in Jharkhand the next state to come up for discussion would be Jharkhand, followed by Bihar and so on. Both Jharkhand and Bihar are tough nuts to crack say congressmen with the pulls and counter pressures of Shibhu Soren on the one hand and Laloo Prasad Yadav and Ram Vilas Paswan on the other. If the warring groups do not come together the thinking may swivel around holding assembly elections along with the Lok Sabha polls.
It is learnt that Pranab Mukherjee has already held 15 rounds of meetings with Amar Singh of the Samajwadi Party as the two parties work towards cobbling together a workable alliance to keep the Bahujan Samaj Party's Mayawati at bay and to strengthen the post-poll accord between the two.
The Samajwadi Party has already announced 52 of the 80 candidates from Uttar Pradesh but congressmen say discussions are on in full swing and they are hopeful that an agreement would be reached.