Margaret Alva, Joint Opposition Vice President Candidate, Was A Protagonist In Her Own Rights

By D N Singh 

Although it is not the occasion when a throw back to the past phases of politics merit a debate but, for Margaret Alva, her political journey can be described as a roller coaster one. From an ardent and disciplined soldier of the Congress, to done the garb of a whistle-blower kind of image, Alva again finds herself out of the political oblivion into limelight.

As in the case of many political leaders, for Alva it has been a course through several highs and lows. She was remaining to her self till 2015s and her interaction with a television channel in 2016 regarding her autobiograohy did create the flicker.

She had many things within her which she ventilated through the book revealing many things those did not augur well with the unquestioned leadership of the family.

At certain stages, her positioning as a Congress leader was worrisome for the party high command and her revelations over the bitterness’s those shroud her relationship with Gandhis with shades of disillusionment were no less candid and frontal.     

 

 Margaret Alva had in a way stunned many inside and outside the Congress by her certain interpolations about the leader at the top Sonia Gandhi, where Alva had minced no words to say that, how the former had failed in her dexterity as a leader to lead the Congress. Dissent was brewing within and Alva’s new role as the governor of Rajasthan, without even being consulted. That was a jiiter for Alva.

Even she had dropped hints in her interview regarding the animus between then Prime Minister Narashimah Rao and Sonia Gandhi which continued till the former died and how his mortal beings failed to reach the Congress head quarters and so on, which is already a history.

But Alva had like many in the Congress party, had not taken that into the strides. “ A dead man should not have been treated like that” Alva recalled in her book.   

In 2008 Karnataka assembly elections, her son Nivedith Alva was not given a ticket deliberately. She claimed that her son had lost out because of being her son. The only qualification that was listed against Nivedith Alva’s name was that he was Margaret Alva’s son. “As if he had done nothing else,” Alva  had rued during the interview with the news channel.

Her allegations then over sale of tickets in Karnataka elections drove the last nail and Alva was removed from the post as AICC General Secretary.