Click to play videoKaran Thapar: Hello and welcome to the Devil's Advocate. Eighteen days before the voting, is the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) in trouble? That is the key issue, I shall explore to discuss today with the minister of Tourism and Culture, Ambika Soni. Mrs Soni, let me start with a simple question. Is the UPA breaking up or are your allies in the alliance isolating Congress, which is it?
Ambika Soni: No neither. It is not breaking up at all and nobody really can isolate the Congress which is probably the oldest and truly a national party.
Karan Thapar: Let's look at the case why people think the UPA is breaking up. To begin with, in critical states like UP, Bihar and Jharkhand and may be Tamil Nadu, which give the Lok Sabha a 174 seats or 30 per cent of the total, the UPA is going to fight as much against itself as is going to be fighting against the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and the Left Front, that is a disaster?
Ambika Soni: No, it is not. Every election time, people want to increase their political support base, they have to readjust. There are pressures on every political party to listen to their own cadres. So this kind of thing is pretty normal. But, don't you look at it the other way.
Karan Thapar: Is it normal? Look at your name – United Progressive Alliance – you are not united, you are not an alliance, and if you are progressing, you are progressing in different directions.
Ambika Soni: No not at all. That may sound good as a question but it is not so. Look at us fighting for our political base in Uttar Pradesh and yet the Samajwadi Party is continuing to praise the leadership of the UPA, are continuing to proclaim from housetops their support to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi.
Karan Thapar: It is interesting you should make that point because in fact, it has just been announced on Wednesday that the Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party, Lalu Prasad's Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and Ram Vilas Paswan's Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) will in fact be campaigning for each other but none of them are going to be campaigning for Congress?
Ambika Soni:That is alright. I don't know how they will be campaigning for each other because on Wednesday I also read that Samajwadi is contesting Bihar. So that has got to be sorted out among themselves. But why don't you find it extremely interesting that all of them – Ram Vilas Paswan, Laluji, Mulayam Singhji are all going to work for Manmohan Singh as prime minister and Sonia Gandhi as UPA chairperson.
Karan Thapar: Even on that they not actually united because Sharad Pawar has made it crystal clear that Manmohan Singh is in fact the Congress party's candidate and not the UPA's candidate. He has added that every member of the UPA has the right to have its own candidate for prime minister. So even at that level, you are no longer united.
Ambika Soni: No, these are little statements which one makes, one political party positions themselves. Just go by the end product. The end product is that Mr Sharad Pawar himself, as I read from the papers, has already said that he is not there because he does not have the numbers.
Karan Thapar: Sharad Pawarji has actually said this in an interview that there is pressure on his party, there is pressure in Maharashtra for a Maharashtrian meaning himself.
Ambika Soni: He said that some time ago.
Karan Thapar: A week ago. That is the most recent thing he said.
Ambika Soni: But after a week, he said many other things also which is quite contradictory.
Karan Thapar: He has said nothing to contradict this and in fact the problem is that your party president in Bihar is now echoing of what Lalu is saying. He is saying that LJP and RJD will be our rivals. So suddenly, not only are they not campaigning for you but you regard them as rivals in Bihar and in Uttar Pradesh your alliance has fractured if not collapsed.
Ambika Soni: No, we are deciding to fight for our own political support base. When we fight an election, we fight to win. It is not a dummy fight. Whoever comes out as the winner at the end of the day, we want to see the people with whose support they came out and I am confident that Congress is going to increase its support base which is the intention of every political party at the end of the day.
Karan Thapar: Let's split the answer that you have given into two. We will talk about what happens at the end of the day in a moment’s time, but first let's concentrate on how this problem began. It began because in January the Congress decided that it wasn't going to have national-level alliances, it was only going to have state-level alliances and the first message you sent out is at this critical point, you were more interested in strengthening the Congress rather than strengthening the UPA. The bonds that held the UPA together were untied and loosened by you.
Ambika Soni: No, it is not by us. These are not things which are done unilaterally. There are circumstances which keep building up. There are leaderships of different political parties which have been together under the UPA under the common minimum programme over five years. Their commitment to the UPA, their commitment to the UPA leadership is very categorical.
Karan Thapar: When you say that these are not things which happened unilaterally, you are not actually me the full truth. Because the Samajwadi Party, to take one small example, offered you 17 seats in UP compared to the nine you won last time, that is virtually double, and yet you rejected it because you have an inflated and exaggerated idea of your strength in that state. It is you unilateral belief that you can do better which no one else shares, that has brought about the crisis in the UPA.
Ambika Soni:Maybe nobody shares today in front of television but there is another thing called popular support base. Look at the meeting attended by our UPA chairperson and the Prime Minister.
Karan Thapar: You had as many people coming to Sonia Gandhi's rallies in 2004 and you ended up with nine seats in UP. You are going to have the same crowd following Rahul Gandhi, it happened during the UP Vidhan Sabha elections, in fact your vote share and your seat strength in the Vidhan Sabha shrank. You know from that experience that the crowd doesn't add up to seats, why them gamble and break an alliance in UP?
Ambika Soni: No neither are we gambling nor are we depending on just crowds, we are also having our inputs, our support base, our cadre who keeps coming back and giving the exact ground reality to our people. Let me ask you one counter question. Why are MPs, MLAs leaving all these parties and coming over to us both in Uttar Pradesh and in Rajasthan.
Karan Thapar: You have broken with Samajwadi, you have broken with the LJP, you have broken with the RJD.
Ambika Soni: Our party had been speaking about friendly fights, so that every party can increase their support base. One thing I insist on putting across, we have gone five years of the UPA governance with Manmohan Singhji and Sonia Gandhi as a solid team leading the UPA. We have five years of work which probably no single government has done in a mandate of five years.
Karan Thapar: But that is the past, when you need to be united, you are not just fighting you are actually quarrelling.
Ambika Soni: It is the past on which we want to build our future.
Karan Thapar: That is what I am questioning. Are you really building a future? Let's take Bihar as an example now. I admit that the first offer from Lalu and Paswan was derisory but then they were prepared to double it. Given that you won only three seats last time, the offer they ultimately made of six should have been acceptable but not only did you refuse them, you now insist that you are going to fight 37 seats and chances are that you won't be able to win even seven of them. So you are exaggerating your belief in yourself.
Ambika Soni: You know you seem to have this uncanny power of predicting how many we are going to win.
Karan Thapar: Not just me, everyone believes it.
Ambika Soni: No, I don't know who is everybody. Not the Congress workers, not people in Bihar, not our contacts and information which we get from Bihar day after day, not all those people who are leaving their parties and joining the Congress. Why would anybody do that with a losing party?
Karan Thapar: Are you seriously telling me that you are going to win 50 per cent of the 37 seats you are contesting in Bihar?
Ambika Soni: We are going to win many more than what we won last time. Many, many more. And that is how our party builds up its political support base.
Karan Thapar: But the problem is that you won so few last time, three to be precise, that even if you win one more, it would be a 30 per cent increase. So many more is not actually a meaningful way of putting it?
Ambika Soni: Unfortunately, we had agreed to four seats last time and out of four, we won three what is the percentage of winning, more than the others. So if that is the percentage, so why should we not think that out of 37 seats, we are going to contest 36 as of now. Out of 36, if we win 10 or 15, isn't that a lot?
Karan Thapar: Mrs Soni you resisted my attempt to convince you that the UPA was breaking. But now I put it to you that even if it remains intact on papers because every component still talks about the UPA, the truth is the Congress has been isolated. A block has been formed by Mulayam Singh Yadav, Ram Vilas Paswan and Lalu Prasad which is actually working to move in another direction once the results are out, that is a problem.
Ambika Soni: If that is the problem then why should Shri Mulayam Singh Yadav, Shri Lalu Yadav and Paswanji continue to say that they are working for Dr Manmohan Singh as prime minister and they are an integral part of the UPA and Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi are the ideal leaders of the UPA.
Karan Thapar: Because as good politicians they are hedging their beds but the truth is that Lalu Prasad and Paswan have already said in Bihar that they are the real UPA and not the Congress, Mulayam says that in UP and there is no doubt that in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu you (Congress) are very much a less relevant partner. So nowhere in the states you hope to get seats, the Congress actually features as the co-element of the UPA.
Ambika Soni: You know we have admitted it over the years that we are weak in these states but do we have no right to build up and increase our support base, that is exactly we are doing. We are also trying that the good work of the UPA rub on the Congress and so we are confident of increasing our support base.
Karan Thapar: But the problem is that whilst you increase your support base which might be a legitimate thing to you to do, your allies are already sending out feeders to the Third Front. Both Lalu Yadav and Sharad Pawar are talking about the need to ally with the Third Front after the elections and the problem is that the one party the Third Front won’t ally with is the Congress. So they are already making arrangements to jump onto the another ship and sail away with the Third Front and form a fourth front and you will be left as the only party in the UPA on its own. That is why I am saying that you are isolated.
Ambika Soni: I don’t know which Third Front you are talking of.
Karan Thapar: I know and you know which Third Front I am talking about so let us not play this game.
Ambika Soni: No, I don’t know and I am not playing any games. It is all about the arithmetic. Half-a-dozen fronts may come into place but it depends on how many seats they would finally get and then when all these people you are talking about and you say they might come in the governance then you are talking opposite to what the Communist Party of India (CPI), Communist Party of India – Marxists (CPI-M) have been saying.
Karan Thapar: No, the CPI and the CPI-M are simply saying that they would not ally with the Congress under any circumstances.
Ambika Soni: Would they ally with the BJP?
Karan Thapar: No, but your allies – Lalu, Sharad and Paswan are all ready to ally with the Third Front and form a fourth front and that is the problem. As soon as the results are announced your allies will jump ship to sail with the Third Front towards a new dawn and you will be left on your own claiming to be the UPA.
Ambika Soni: Karan, I am not going to spend my time speculating on what you would like to see.
Karan Thapar: It is a nightmare and that is why you don’t want to think about it.
Ambika Soni: No, it is not. We are fighting in Bihar on full 36 seats after quite a long time.
Karan Thapar: That is the fault. You will undercut Lalu and Paswan chances in the state.
Ambika Soni: Go and ask those Congress men and women who worked at the grassroots for these years just for this chance of fighting on the Congress platform in Bihar.
Karan Thapar: That is absolutely right. You thrill your party workers, I grant you that but in the process you will undermine, diminish and demolish the UPA so you will have a happy party but a defeated alliance and you will be out of power.
Ambika Soni: Well, I am not going to start saying what is going to be because I know to the extend I can speak with the authority that what we are doing is in the best of the interest of the party, the UPA and in giving a strong, stable government to the country.
Karan Thapar: If what you are doing is in the best interest of the UPA then how do you count that Lalu Yadav in public has repeatedly said that Sonia Gandhi is making a serious and terrible mistake and she is going to regret it . How do you count for that?
Ambika Soni: I read his statement last night and he said this is nothing to do with Sonia Gandhi. May be her people have not given her the right input. He is underestimating the intelligence, the political savvy of Mrs Sonia Gandhi.
Karan Thapar: But he says she is being misled by people.
Ambika Soni: He doesn’t want to lose her. What will rub off Dr Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi, everyone wants a share of that. Why don’t you look at it? They want to talk against the Congress but they want to adopt our leaders for themselves because they are the two leaders on whose names they are going to get votes.
Karan Thapar: But they haven’t called Sonia to campaign in UP, Jharkhand or in Bihar.
Ambika Soni: Because they know she will not go to campaign for them. We have enough candidates of our own and she doesn’t have time to go.
Karan Thapar: They don’t see her as a campaign winner for them. In fact they would campaign on their own against the Congress in these states.
Ambika Soni: Yes, why not.
Karan Thapar: So far from relying on Sonia, needing Sonia they are dispensing from Sonia and creating their environment where they don’t need her.
Ambika Soni: That is alright. That is their strategy, let them go with it. But surely we have right to use our own strategy. We have an experience of 120 years of being a national party and spreading all over the country.
Karan Thapar: Let us then briefly try to look into your strategy. People can’t really seem to understand the strategy behind your attitude to your alliance. Let me put something to you, are you as a party so befuddled and mistaken by your own belief in Rahul Gandhi’s appeal that you have given yourself a false and misleading confidence that you really belief that on his court tails the Congress will come to power?
Ambika Soni: You know Rahul Gandhi has generated a tremendous amount of enthusiasm among the youngsters.
Karan Thapar: But he didn’t brought in votes. He didn’t do it in Punjab, UP etc.
Ambika Soni: I come from Punjab and I am telling you the first hand information. I don’t have to be contradicted because I won’t stand it, the number of young people irrespective of political labour wanted to come forward on Rahul Gandhi’s appeal.
Karan Thapar: The problem is that Mrs Soni this sounds okay at the rallies when you see audiences, it sounds okay when you are impressing the literati of Delhi but you know what happened in UP, he attracts crowd but he ended up losing the Vidhan Sabha seat and vote share for you. Rahul’s popularity may be there but it doesn’t translate into votes so by relying on him and not relying on your allies you are making a mistake.
Ambika Soni: We don’t have to rely on any single thing. Fortunately for us we have a five-year record where we have done things that noone else has ever done, we have three major promises which we made in our manifesto three days ago, we have a leadership which is not comparable to anyone and we have young people coming forward to look at the appeals made by Rahul Gandhi.
Karan Thapar:You may have a record you are proud of, othere might dispute but I won’t. You may have a strategy which you claim is going to be effective, others may dispute it, I have but I would concede for a moment that you have convinced me. But the problem is that look at the difference between yourself and your behaviour with your allies and the BJP and its behaviour. The BJP has made concessions to the JD(U) and the Shiv Sena to keep the NDA intact but you are making demands from your allies, you are pushing them and straining the UPA.
Ambika Soni: Karan you are probably the best political interviewer or the media personality but surely you don’t see the NDA crumbling. Where is the NDA, they are hanging onto Nitish Kumar in Bihar, look at the BJP, Arun Jaitley not going to the meetings.
Karan Thapar: But the problem is that a month ago or two weeks ago when the BJD kicks the BJP’s teeth there was no doubt that the NDA was crumbling but you have crumbled as fast if not faster than they have.
Ambika Soni:Mamata has joined us.
Karan Thapar: PMK is leaving you, RJD, Paswan have split with you.
Ambika Soni: No they are not leaving us.
Karan Thapar: But they are hardly with you.
Ambika Soni: No, they have not left us.
Karan Thapar: Okay, my least question. The reason you face this problem is that a month ago people would say that the Congress will be the single largest party but today they are not at all shocked, they think you are vulnerable and are heading towards an unpredictable future. You moved within one month from the undisputable, inevitable to unpredictable and serious trouble. That change in fortune is the problem you face.
Ambika Soni: In TV rooms, drawing rooms politics are not decided. You can discuss them interminably but politics is decided where people really work and that is out in the field. The farmers who got their loans, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) scheme beneficiaries, the rural health mission, the mid-day meal, the women and innumerable sections; the weaker sections decide.
Karan Thapar: As you smile and say that I grant you the last word. Lets hope for your sake you are right. It was a pleasure talking to you.
Ambika Soni: We are coming back Karan.
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