These meetings are expected to formalise a restructuring of the Congress, endorse them by amending the party constitution and result in a new-look party which Sonia hopes to usher into the new millenium. The CWC meeting is supposed to be held in a week's time.

On the agenda are clearing the pending Pachmarhi proposals to beef up the organisation and reviewing the current political situation. While the second doesn't involve much work, given the lull in political activity, the first task is cumbersome. Which is why the Pachmarhi brainstorming camp chose to have a full CWC meeting on just organisational matters.

Essentially, the whole thing boils down to theSonia factor in the party, which is working on two fronts, political and organisational. At the moment, Sonia is clearly number one in the party with CWC member Sharad Pawar a distant second. The tussle between the two is the key drama and Pawar is never one to be underestimated though he starts with a handicap.

On the political side, Sonia shrewdly put Pawar in his place by her subtle rejection of the Rashtriya Loktantrik Morcha, headed by Pawar friends Mulayam Singh Yadav and Laloo Prasad Yadav, as a possible long-term ally of the Congress.

Indeed, Sonia went a step ahead saying the Congress will have to think of its own future in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar instead of aligning with casteist forces. This message was duly carried forward in the Pachmarhi Declaration which said the Congress will go solo in the long run and look at coalition allies only if absolutely necessary.

This was Sonia's style of replying to Pawar's now-famous utterance that the Congress' allies will decide on who shall be the PrimeMinisterial candidate and that Sonia could be so only if the Congress had a majority on its own in the Lok Sabha.

That left the Congress looking only to the Left, which has already said it will back whomsoever the party chooses as its head in the event of the BJP-led coalition collapsing.

From here Sonia moved to the organisational front. Among the 14 main points cleared by the organisational group in Pachmarhi, headed by Ghulam Nabi Azad, are several clinching ones for Sonia. None for Pawar.

For a start, the group ruled that the party network, down from the Congress president, is supreme over the elected wings like the Congress Parliamentary Party (CPP) and Congress Legislature Party (CLPs). Sonia is party head and Pawar chief of the party in the Lok Sabha. Secondly, the Pachmarhi camp cleared the setting up of a Congress Election Authority, on the lines of the country's Election Commission, which will henceforth look after party polls.

This body is likely to have a chairman, a convenor and threemembers making it a full component of five. Once this panel is in place, elections to the DCC, PCC, AICC and the CWC could be relatively free and fair, or so Sonia hopes. The last CWC election, at the Calcutta Congress plenary, was a controversial one with both Kesri camp and the Pawar camp making allegations against each other.

The Pachmarhi camp also ruled that all disciplinary complaints can be looked into directly by relevant committees without involving AICC general secretaries, with the rider that only the party president can constitute the disciplinary committees.

Likewise, Congress membership shall henceforth be on the principle of proportional representation, to avoid sidelining minorities and other sections of society, code of conduct will be effective for members, accountability committees will monitor the work of CLPs, surveys in Assembly and Parliamentary constituencies will be conducted twice a year, active members will be given photo I-cards, NGOs will have a bigger role in the party andCongress property across the country will be quantified and maintained.

Three other recommendations await CWC clearance: Deserters to be put on a three-year ``cooling'' period before being given party posts, only judicial charges against any leader being made the yardstick for barring him or her from political activity and increasing the size of units like the DCC, PCC, AICC and CWC.

The forthcoming CWC meeting is expected to sanction most of the above suggestions. They will then be forwarded to the Congress Constitution Review Committee, headed by K Karunakaran, a loyalist of 10, Janpath. This committee's recommendations are to be cleared first by the CWC, which will meet again, and finally by an emergency AICC session.

That should leave the ``new'' Congress firmly in Sonia's hands.