Nehru-Gandhis all the way at AICC meet

NEW DELHI: India is Indira, Indira is India. Former Congress president Deb Kant Barua''s fawning got an update on Saturday.
"Nehru-Gandhi family is not a family. It is a movement," Union minister Priyaranjan Das Munshi set the mood for the All India Congress Committee session. In this movement, he included Rahul Gandhi, the fifth and the last on the generation ladder.
The name Rajiv was the byword, and the proceedings his extended birth anniversary celebrations, which passed on Friday.
As the nostalgia for Rajiv Gandhi dripped all over, Talkatora Stadium''s sou-nd proofing almost gave out to wild applause each time his name was uttered.
The session''s venue was Rajiv Gandhi Nagar, the first of the four resolutions passed by the delegates, was on him.
The other one on his wife, Congress president Sonia Gandhi, whose refusal to become the PM after the poll was a "sacrifice" compared to that of "Mahatma Gandhi, Bhagat Singh and Jallianwalah Bagh martyrs". Giant cutouts sporting the family looked down at the venue.
In all this brouhaha, the party forgot the Prime Minister. Manmohan Singh was relegated to a poster image at the backdrop of the meeting. Everywhere else it was spot the PM, win a prize!
As resolutions on the Gandhi family were distributed all over. The PM''s speech was hard to find. The PMO''s office had to fax copies of the speech to those who wanted it as the organisers had simply forgotten to distribute them.
But it was not their fault. They simply went by the mood. While family worship has been part of the organisational DNA, the AICC session saw the delegates going about it in unabashed fashion.
In fact, Sonia had to urge Congressmen to accept Singh as he was - of great learning and impeccable reputation.