The Nine-Assembly Election

Romesh Thapar OBSERVERS of the political scene in the Capital are once again being made aware of the paucity of evidence on which their understanding and forecasting of events is based. The reporting pattern is familiar. At first, we took note of Sanjay Gandhi's dominance in the pranting of tickets to his 'loyal' followers, and at the expense of the traditional Congresswallahs. Then, we entered phase two, the disarray and faction fighting in the Congress (I) camp. Now, the newspapers are full of reports of aborted and thinly-attended meetings of Indira Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi.