'Congress should abandon UPA experiment in next Lok Sabha polls'

As Sonia Gandhi is set to get re-elected as Congress president this month, a senior leader has advocated the need for the party to abandon the UPA experiment in the next Lok Sabha polls.

Former Union minister Vasant Sathe also pitched for the party emulating Indira Gandhi by going in for a massive pro-poor scheme like a new 20-point programme that could help the party win the 2014 Lok Sabha polls on its own.

"There should be no repeat of UPA experiment in next polls. We should not depend upon coalition politics for long. Parliamentary democracy is basically two-party system. Coalition concept is alien to Parliamentary system," the octogenarian leader, who had closely worked with Indira Gandhi, told PTI.

He said that in a coalition, the ruling party has to depend upon too many groups and parties and therefore "you cannot carry out your policies and programmes".

This is for the first time a senior leader has spoken publicly in favour of the party going it alone. In private, several leaders admit that coalition is necessarily a compulsion.

The party has been singing the mantra of 'going it alone' in the Lok Sabha polls in Uttar Pradesh and now the coming assembly elections in Bihar.

Sonia Gandhi led the Congress to the coalition route in 2004, with UPA-I being the first experiment of the 125-year old party to share power at the Centre. Gandhi's call for unity of secular forces in 2003 saw the ouster of the BJP-led NDA from power.

Sathe's refrain was that Sonia should emulate Indira to bring the party to power on its own in the next LS polls. 

His contention was that the path of Indira would take the Congress to power on its own given the fact that the opposition was facing a crisis with the BJP failing to get its act together and the Left getting increasingly marginalised.

"In the 2014 polls, Congress should go on its own and for that Gandhi should start preparing right now. A new 20-point programme for the poor like the one launched by Indiraji will
help Congress win on its own," he said.

Sathe said that since Sonia "for all practical purposes" has been the leader of the party and the government, she should look for ameliorating the lot of the poor, facing hardships due to price rise and joblessness.

Sathe had sometime back reminded Sonia that people rallied round Indira in the 1980 polls after she rebuilt the party following the split, shunned alliances and brought up several young leaders at a time when the stalwarts targeted her.

Sathe said that in the years to come, the top priority of the Congress should be focusing on people living below poverty line and Sonia should take a leaf out of Indira Gandhi's "garibi hatao' (remove poverty) plank.

He hailed the supportive role being played by Rahul Gandhi for Congress in reaching out to the poor.

This, he said, was necessary as the country has taken to the path of the open market economy under the guidance of prime minister Manmohan Singh, whose finance ministership in the early nineties saw India giving up the path of socialistic pattern of society.

The market economy has turned 20 to 30% of the people of the country affluent, he said adding that the vast remaining population has remained poor.

"Despite being a democracy, unless you take steps like those taken by China, the poor cannot get a fair deal," he said underlining the need for a combination of government interference for the welfare of the common man and making the affluent class to contribute for the poor.

The election of Sonia Gandhi as party president for the third consecutive time is likely by end of August after the monsoon session of Parliament is over.

Gandhi created a record of being the longest-serving Congress President and completed over a decade since she took over the top post in 1998 in the wake of the party's dismal showing in the Lok Sabha polls that saw the exit of Sitaram Kesri from the post.