A Congress supporter shouts anti-BJP slogans outside 10 Janpath on Thursday. (AFP)

New Delhi, March 23: For a party coming to grips with the fallout of the Indo-US nuclear deal and the disquiet among Muslims over George W. Bush’s visit, Sonia Gandhi’s twin resignations have come as an elixir.

Sonia’s announcement was flashed at lightning speed from 10 Janpath to the party headquarters next door ? 24 Akbar Road ? and then it spread like wildfire across the capital to the suburbs and the satellite townships in Uttar Pradesh and Haryana.

Between 3.15 pm ? when Sonia spoke to reporters ? and 5, all roads leading to her residence and the Congress office were choc-a-bloc with workers and leaders, and, ironically, aspirants to positions of power.

So as the workers celebrated their leader’s spirit of “tyaag” (sacrifice) and the twin slaps on her rivals’ faces away from the flashbulbs, out-of-work politicos such as Buta Singh, Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar made sure they were seen and heard.

Sajjan climbed atop a jeep and declared that the Congress president was a true disciple of Mahatma Gandhi.

An activist quipped that the three must be feeling a special “empathy” for Sonia as they, too, had “sacrificed” their posts, though under duress.

So, what does the Congress make of Sonia’s third declaration of “sacrifice”? The first was in 1998, when her position as party president was contested by Sharad Pawar on the “foreign origin” issue and the second was in May 2004 when she nearly became Prime Minister but opted out.

Sources said the BJP and the Samajwadi Party had picked on a “technical” flaw in the law on office of profit and turned it into a political issue. “The Samajwadis sought to equate Sonia with their MP, Jaya Bachchan, and were projecting it as a battle between an oppressor and a victim. It was as though Sonia and Jaya were equals,” smirked one of them.

Not just Jaya, the sources said, heavyweights like L.K. Advani and Mulayam Singh Yadav, who had bayed for Sonia’s scalp, were “silenced” by her “swift” response.

However, amid the noisy celebrations, there was also a note of caution. Some in the party believe that the “sacrifice” could become an overkill if it happens repeatedly.

The problem, said a senior functionary, was not with Sonia but with her “managers” who have “failed” her in crisis after crisis. “Whether it was Jharkhand, Bihar or Volcker, it is their shoddy management which landed her in trouble. They must ensure it’s not repeated otherwise her image will take a deep beating sometime.”

It appears that senior Congress leaders like Ahmed Patel and Janardhan Dwivedi may involve themselves in government and parliamentary matters more deeply so that their leader is “insulated” against future goof-ups.

For the moment, the party is thinking of how to use the “sacrifice” series in the election campaign. A suggestion was to “expose” the Left and show how its leaders were intent on sticking to their offices despite complaints of holding offices of profit.