BBC News Online: Despatches

Sonia goes on the attack at Bangalore rally

Sonia Gandhi, the widow of the assassinated former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, has strongly attacked those who have alleged she and her late husband were implicated in a scandal involving kick-backs from a big arms deal in the 1980s. Mrs Gandhi was speaking at an election campaign rally in the Southern city of Bangalore. Our correspondent Daniel Lak was at the rally

A crowd estimated at several tens of thousands cheered wildly as Mrs Gandhi said all information about the Bofors scandal should be made public. Only then, she said, would her husband's name be cleared.

Those who continued to suggest that he was implicated in the affair were conducting a malicious campaign against him, Mrs Gandhi told the crowd. The scandal she was referring to was the alleged payment of millions of dollars in bribes by the Bofors arms company of Sweden to high officials in India in the 1980s.

Indian and Swedish governments have investigated but they haven't been able to prosecute anyone. Mrs Gandhi's reference to the Bofors scandal in her speech was the first time she has spoken out so strongly on the matter.

Her entry into the election campaign late last year buoyed a sagging Congress Party but opposing political parties threatened to make the Bofors affair into an election issue. Her words in Bangalore will go a long way towards blunting that attack.

Election hotting up with a month to go

The Congress Party's main opponent -- the Hindu nationalist BJP -- has been campaigning the hardest so far. Observers say their campaign has been the most focussed on issues and the most well organised.

But with a month to go before the first day of voting in the general election it is still far too early to say who has the upper hand.

Mrs Gandhi began her campaign earlier this week with her daughter Priyanka at a rally just outside Madras, close to the site of Rajiv Gandhi's assassination.

Together with her daughter Priyanka, she paid tribute to a husband and a father whose death still causes obvious pain in the family left behind. Mrs Gandhi has been an enigmatic but influential figure on the Indian scene since then, saying little except about the need to resolve her husband's killing.

Offers to lead the Congress Party by its ageing leadership have been consistently rebuffed. Many wonder if Mrs Gandhi is keeping her connections alive in case her daughter takes up the Nehru Gandhi family mantle some day.

Now Sonia Gandhi's campaign is well underway. The rallies in Bangalore and across India are being watched closely to see if the magic of the family dynasty can actually substitute for the absence of substantive issues in this election.

Relevant Stories

Sonia Gandhi: the reluctant politician (12 Jan 98 | Special Report)
India's ruling dynasty (12 Jan 98 | Special Report)
Sonia Gandhi begins campaigning in south India (11 Jan 98 | Despatches)

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