Margaret Alva back in KPCC after brief retirement

The rift between Alva and Congress began after she alleged that Congress tickets were sold to the highest bidder in the 2008 elections.

After keeping a distance from the Congress for close to two years and refraining from any party related work, Margaret Alva seems to have been roped into Karnataka Pradesh Congress Election Committee ahead of state elections.

The rift between Alva and Congress began after she alleged that Congress tickets were sold to the highest bidder in the 2008 elections. According to a Deccan Chronicle report, Alva alleged that a Congress leader used money power to ensure that her son was defeated.

Margaret Alva's book 'Courage and Commitment' criticised the way the party was being run after Sonia Gandhi took over the party leadership. The things she wrote in her book about what happens behind closed doors in the Congress party had left many Congressmen red-faced.

She had remarked that the party was taking money before offering election nominations. She had questioned why her son Nivedith and the grandson of former Union minister C. K. Jaffer Sharief were not given nominations while relatives of two dozen leaders were given tickets in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Jammu and Kashmir.

Her reaction expressed in a television interview created a controversy. The Congress Party, which conducted a probe under A. K. Antony, recommended her expulsion from the party.

Elected as a member of the Rajya Sabha for four successive terms, Margaret Alva was made Central Minister at the age of 42. Alva assumed several responsibilities, under Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi and Narasimha Rao. Even during the non-Congress years, Alva was very much a part of the Lutyen's zone political narrative that she has penned down in the book and makes for interesting reading, said an ANI report.

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