So, did her own men bring Sonia down?

Day after, it's time for post-mortem -- both inside the Congress party and outside it.

So, did the Congress itself bring Sonia down? Or was it a gigantic PR disaster? Who were the people behind the alleged move to bring in an ordinance to shield Sonia Gandhi even when there was enough political space to enact a law? Could the Congress have handled the crisis in a better way?

These are the questions doing the rounds at 10, Janpath and the Congress quarters on Friday as an internal search is on for a scapegoat for the move that now increasingly looks like shooting on its own feet.

For, even though Sonia Gandhi's resignation as an MP and as the Chairperson of NAC looked like a political master-stroke at the first sight, there was an instant realisation that the move did not quite go down well with the audience at large.

The Congress did show exceptional alacrity in handling the crisis, yet ironically they could not get away from the fact that the mess was something of their own making.

It was quite evident that the communication (rather, the lack of it) did the party in. And the blame game has now begun exactly at this point. If sources in the Congress are to be believed, Sonia herself was not quite in the know of things with regard to the ordinance.

The decision to promulgate the ordinance was reportedly taken by a coterie of party leaders.

The popular belief in the Congress circles is that the villain of the drama was Law Minister H R Bhardwaj, who allegedly mishandled the internal discussions among the Members of Parliament over some kind of changes in the Parliament (Prevention of Disqualification) Act of 1959.

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The other big names doing the rounds are Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Home Minister Shivraj Patil, and some other in-house legal experts. Sources say the ordinance plan was conceived by these big names, who insisted on pressing ahead with the move till the last hour.

"The development that led to Sonia's resignation has exposed the bad political management in the party. When Sonia refused the Prime Minister's post after the May 2004 Lok Sabha polls, it had sent across a positive signal of great sacrifice. But her resignation this time was due to the short-sightedness of her political advisors, who led the banner of protest against Samajwadi Party MP Jaya Bachchan," a senior Congress Cabinet minister and former MPCC president said in Mumbai on Thursday.

In Delhi also, senior party leaders are believed to have acknowledged the fact that the disaster was the party's own making and the party leaders could have managed it in a far better way had they thought ahead of time.

What followed Sonia's resignation is another problem that is now threatening to recoil on the party. Three MPs -- Karan Singh, Gurudas Kamat and Kapila Vatsayan -- and four legislators in J&K have resigned so far following in the footsteps of their leader. But how many more? If news reports are to be believed, as many as 10 MPs from the party -- including Union minister T Subirami Reddy -- face similar charges of holding offices of profit.

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Will all of them go? If they do, that is likely to leave the party and the entire political system in the big mess requiring almost a mini-general election in the country. If they don't, what does one make out of the so-called moral high ground that does not apply to one and all within the same party?

The party seems to have realised this problem. On Friday, it said each MP's case is separate, and they can decide on their own if they want to resign.

This, coupled with Congress' own ally CPI(M)'s stand that its MPs will not be quitting their seats, now deprive the Congress of some brownie points that it aimed to achieve from Sonia's 'Supreme Sacrifice'.

And the fact that the Government will have to eventually bring in a law (and may even have to reconvene the Parliament) to amend the office of profit norms might also take away all the sheen off Sonia's great act of sacrifice enacted from 10, Janpath on Thursday.