Does Congress Party has a succession plan after Sonia Gandhi.

Sonia Gandhi (@ Antonio Maino), the President of Congress Party, along with her son has left for USA, bypassing the Parliamentary Session beginning Monday. It is said that it is a “routine” check up. But this disinformation is in tune with the policy of party where need of privacy of the Queen Mother overshadows everything else.

Frail health of Madam President

On Aug 15 this year on the occasion of Independence Day, Former Defence Minister A.K. Antony hoisted the national flag at the party headquarters here on Independence Day on Saturday in the absence of Sonia Gandhi as the interim party President was too unwell to attend. Her son Rahul Gandhi was, however, present during the ceremony. She has not stepped out in the public and in a few videos, she managed to appear, she is frail and has apparently lost a lot of weight which is a clear sign of serious ailment especially at her age of 74 (born in 1946). She is President of the Congress Party since 1998 except for few years when her son was President.

23 leaders of the Party had written to Sonia Gandhi seeking her to create a clear-cut mechanism to govern the party with effective central leadership. The letter also demanded re-election of the CWC and the establishment of an effective collective system of responsibility. The result was that all these 23 leaders have been effectively sidelines by taking away what ever role they had in the party. Though they have not been sacked from the party. It was formally announced that presently Sonia Gandhi will retain the office of President until further arrangement. Rahul Gandhi is stated to have been furious about the timing of the letter due to ill health of his mother.

Surgical procedure in 2011:

In 2011 Sonia Gandhi underwent a pancreatic surgery in USA and India Today reported about it later as under:

“Some word has begun to trickle down since Sonia has returned. She has confided to a select few Congress leaders that she had first stage cancer, for which she went through a seven-hour-long surgical procedure. “In June, when Congressmen claimed that she had gone abroad to tend to her ailing mother, she had gone for her own treatment,” a Congress leader told India Today. “The good news is that the illness is not life-threatening. However, it will be at least six months before she will be able to handle the normal workload,” the source said…..India has substituted news with plenty of conjecture. Since August 4, when bbc and Agence France-Presse broke the news of Sonia Gandhi’s surgery”

As regard the nature of illness it reported:

” the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, US, where Sonia reportedly had her surgery……………………………..the 64-year-old Congress president was initially diagnosed with an “unspecified mass” in her pancreas. The tests indicated the probability of the rare neuroendocrine tumour of the pancreas (pNET). The more common pancreatic cancers, adenocarcinoma, are virulent and have a survival rate of about two per cent. But pNET is more slow-spreading and treatable. “The long OT time could be because pNET is so rare. It affects less than one person in 100,000 in the US,” the doctors told India Today………….The operation could have taken long, says a doctor who refuses to be identified, because, post-operation, the biopsy revealed that it wasn’t probably a cancer at all. “It was most likely an unusual disorder, pancreatic tuberculosis, which very often mimics pNET,” he said. The symptoms for pancreatic tb and cancer can be surprisingly similar, making diagnosis virtually impossible: from fever and fatigue to weight loss to upper abdominal pain radiating to the back.

The Crown Prince in Waiting:

There was no official communication about the illness or prognosis. At that time she was acting as “Super Prime Minister” of India remote controlling Manmohan Singh as Prime Minister. But the aforesaid news published in India Today can be taken as near as official version as it is like family gazette as may be seen from following collage:

Coming back to the ailment it may be noted that in aforesaid news the attempt was to dispel the presence of ‘Cancer’ and substitute it with Tb but now we know that whatever it was, it has resurfaced again and visible from the frail frame of Sonia Gandhi.

What is however is surprising that inspite of such bleak chances of health and admitted unfitness to hold an active office, she has chosen to stick to the office without making any arrangement for succession.

Cancer is not a kind illness especially when it manages to survive a surgery and reappear. The reappearance is generally virulent without leaving much scope for another surgery. I leave it for members of Congress Party to ponder on

“What if…”

In any case it can not be believed that the mother son has gone out of country to make consultation with China. There is no proof for that speculation.

However their nice chamcha journalist Mr. Ganju (hypothetical name) has started batting for resolution of dispute which preposition implies that India has started/created mess on border with China.