CALCUTTA, AUG 7: Congress president Sitaram Kesri tonight stymied attempts to force an election to the all-important Congress Working Committee (CWC) in a stormy, long and inconclusive meeting here tonight at his temporary residence at Brahmachari House.

Kesri and his aides in the erstwhile CWC, now called the Steering Committee, fought bitterly till the end. Around 11.30 pm, three-and-a-half hours after the discussions began, several members of the Steering Committee walked out of the meeting saying nothing had been agreed on. Even the vital political and economic resolutions which would set the tone for the Congress policy for the next few years were left open.

The official agenda was one of finalising the four party resolutions but the one clause ``any other business'' opened the floodgates. Sharad Pawar, Rajesh Pilot, K Karunakaran, surprisingly Vijaya Bhaskara Reddy, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Tariq Anwar and others wanted an election to the CWC as in the past. Kesri's staunchest follower R K Dhawan said it should be left to the Congress president, as he had done in the past.

There were indications that Kesri will pull off the second-biggest coup of his tenure as party head by nominating all the 20 members to the CWC. This will be the first time that such an open obeisance will be paid by the CWC to the Congress president, should such an event occur. Kesri was as pleased as a cat, grinning right through a 15-minute meeting with this correspondent late at night at his house.

He was pretty certain he would have his way. Sharad Pawar hobbled out of the meeting saying he would contest the CWC election. Pilot and Karunakaran were a little more circumspect only offering that they would be in the fray ``if'' an election was held. In the end, the basic thrust of the meeting was that the Congress leaders had underestimated Kesri.

The biggest embarrassment, in this connection, for the Congress, was that A K Antony who won by the biggest margin in the last CWC election at Tirupati boycotted tonight's CWC meeting. This was the worst setback for Kesri. On the political resolution too a fair deal of hot word were exchanged. Pranab Mukherjee, chairman of the drafting committee, and a man who so far has not been connected with the Babri Masjid demolition, objected to Arjun Singh's draft. Singh had worded it in a manner that the Congress was seeking a virtual apology for the demolition. In the end, the wording be changed and the BJP-RSS combine be blamed for constitutional impropriety.

Similarly, the economic resolution too was a matter of debate. Manmohan Singh, the architect of Narasimha Rao's liberalisation policy, laid emphasis on the matte. Kesri's men felt they should tone it down and distance themselves from Rao's policy as it had brought the party down.

This was probably one of the most tumultuous meetings ever held by Kesri in his time as party chief. But by the end it looked like he would emerge the winner, yet again.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.