The Rahul Raj

                                                              @jiteshtrapasiya

Rahul Gandhi has long seen himself as the conscience-keeper of the party, the Government, and by lofty extension, the entire nation. A khadi-clad social worker who knows what 'real India' wants, what it eats, and where it sleeps. It's as if he is an NGO-morally superior to people doing normal jobs and immune to the stains of administrative apathy and bureaucratic red tape. The party had hoped he would end this lonely crusade. That he would accept the platter he was being offered and do with it what other members of his family had done before. Today's new, reborn Rahul is a man with a plan: Not for the distant future, or even five years later, but for 2014.

While the Narendra Modi juggernaut is sweeping across urban India, revitalising BJP cadres, Rahul, 43, has been leading his own silent revolution within the Congress by putting his people in key roles across the length and breadth of the party. Even as Sonia and her Political Secretary Ahmed Patel are working on allies, Rahul, armed with an in-depth 543-seat analysis carried out by party General Secretary Madhusudan Mistry, is planning campaign strategies and ticket distribution. Insiders say his "issue-based interventions", such as the Press Club hit-andrun, which not only tie in with public opinion but also perceptibly distance him from a highly unpopular Government, will only increase from here on.

"After Rahul's latest intervention, the message is clear. We must look at him-not Manmohan Singh, not Sonia-before any major decision," says a Cabinet minister. "The balance of power has shifted from 10, Janpath to 12, Tughlak Lane."

Rahul's Writ Runs 

The scent of Rahul's tacit takeover had been blowing in the wind since September 24, when he got a text message from South Mumbai MP Milind Deora while sitting in a meeting with party workers at the Chokar Dhani Resort in Nagpur. Congress General Secretary Digvijaya Singh, smarter than most when it comes to catching the drift, tweeted on September 25: "It would've been better if a consensus was arrived at (on the ordinance). Maybe the government had its compulsions." The next morning, Deora set the cat among the pigeons with his tweet: "Legalities aside, allowing convicted MPs/MLAs to retain seats in the midst of an appeal can endanger already eroding public faith in democracy." "The moment Deora spoke out against the ordinance," says a wily senior leader, "I knew what Rahul Gandhi was thinking."

Reports have suggested that passing the ordinance had become an issue because President Pranab Mukherjee had raised objections, asking why the Government wasn't willing to wait for a bill that was already with the parliamentary Standing Committee. But top party sources have told INDIA TODAY that the force majeure was Rahul all along. On September 25, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kamal Nath, Law Minister Kapil Sibal and Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde met the President at Rashtrapati Bhavan. Though he was concerned initially, sources say the ministers convinced him to give the goahead. It was when Shinde called Rahul to brief him about the meeting that the tide suddenly turned. "Those who think the President was going to return the ordinance are wrong," says a Congress leader. "He may have taken some more time but there was no question of sending it back. It was Rahul who had something different in mind."

A day after Manmohan had tried to put on a brave face while returning from a trip to the United States, on October 2, he and Rahul met in solitude at 7, Race Course Road. Half an hour later, Rahul was following the events from 10, Janpath when a core committee meeting attended by Sonia, Manmohan, Shinde and Patel unceremoniously disowned the ordinance. He was still at his mother's house at 6 p.m. when Sibal proposed to the Cabinet, which had already deliberated on the issue twice before, that both the ordinance and the bill be junked. The motion was carried unanimously with Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar the token voice of dissent.

Section 8 (4) of the Representation of the People Act (1951), which allows convicted MPs or MLAs to hold office, was termed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court on July 10. The Government had wanted to amend the sub-section 4 of Section 8 of the Act, effectively setting aside the court's ruling. Once the bill was junked, Information and Broadcasting Minister Manish Tewari said that Rahul's view was "based on the widest possible feedback". Ironically, Tewari had been talking to the press about the merits of the ordinance when Rahul had called it "nonsense".

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