Infighting, under boss’s nose: Rane points towards Congress Sevadal workers creating a ruckus at the party convention in Mumbai on Thursday as Sonia looks on. (PTI)

Mumbai, June 19: Sonia Gandhi today gave the Congress a sneak preview of the next election campaign. Her party returned the compliment by offering her a ringside view of realpolitik.

Addressing a Congress convention in western Mumbai, Sonia asserted that the Manmohan Singh government was the most stable and progressive alliance in post-Independence India, her speech sounding almost like an election pitch.

However, minutes before Sonia stood up to speak, a group of Congress workers raised slogans like “CM hatao, Maharashtra Bachao” and waived black flags. Clashes broke out with some activists hurling chairs and bottles at each other in the middle of speeches by Sushil Kumar Shinde and Shivraj Patil. The target of the slogans — chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh — also appeared helpless.

Trying to maintain her composure, Sonia said: “All big leaders are Congress workers first. Nobody will gain if we are not united. United, we have to walk ahead. The Congress will grow only if we are together.”

But the violence continued even after her speech with workers attacking others who had raised black flags. Sonia then walked back to the podium and said in Hindi: “Don’t beat up those who waived the black flags. Let them go.”

Party leaders initially said workers were upset as they could not see and hear the Congress president but others pointed fingers at known Deshmukh-baiter and revenue minister Narayan Rane, whose former Shiv Sainik supporters are notorious for their aggressive behaviour.

Rane has been at the forefront of the rebellion against Deshmukh, and had met Sonia several times in the past one year demanding a change in leadership ahead of the 2009 Assembly polls.

Rane quickly denied that his supporters were involved, and blamed it on a conspiracy to defame him.

“Whenever the Congress has weakened, the Centre, the states and the society, in general, have been affected. The Congress is a people’s party, we stand for the aam aadmi,” Sonia said, reeling off various schemes of the UPA for the benefit of the common man.

Without naming the Shiv Sena or the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, Sonia told the workers to fight regionalism. “Regionalism is being encouraged here. We have to fight the forces of regionalism which are dividing society for their vested interests.

“History is a witness to the fact that whenever Congressmen have united, nobody has been able to stop them. In today’s political scenario also, the Congress had never compromised on its principles,” she said.

At another meeting in Ahmednagar, she emphasised the party’s commitment to the common man and told the farmers that the loan waiver was a “revolutionary step” taken by the UPA government to help the poor. She justified the fuel price hike as a result of spiralling global oil prices.