Manmohan’s biggest dilemma now is to seat Sonia appropriately in Lok Sabha. She will call all the shots, Manmohan the servant has to follow the orders. Other ministers will have to follow her body language. Menacing attacks will come from BJP. Manmohan and others in UPA will have to shoulder the same. The arrows cannot go past them and hit the Queen Sonia. She cannot seat next to Manmohan because she is just an MP. So where to seat her?

It's a question of working out a politically correct seating order in the House and where exactly Sonia Gandhi features in the frame. 

That when Parliament opens on Wednesday and the new Lok Sabha members take oath, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will be occupying the seat in the front bench designated for the Numero Uno is elementary. 

What is proving to be a tough nut for Congress managers to crack is where to seat Sonia Gandhi. The seat next to the PM is designated for the Number Two and hence won't do for her. 

For all the power-behind-the-throne halo around her, Sonia Gandhi, technically speaking, is just an MP. Still, the idea of assigning her a seat in either the middle or rear circles is sacrilege for Congressmen still reeling under the renunciation impact, even if she is believed to be ready for an ordinary seat in the House. 

So the exercise has boiled down to finding the seat for the de-facto head in the front row. 

Thankfully, Congress managers have been spared the problem of whom to designate the Number Two. The party has settled on Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee, who is to be the party leader in the Lok Sabha and will sit next to the PM. 

Accordingly, even in the CCPA, Mukherjee will be seated in the chair next to Prime Minister Singh, going by his Number Two status. 

Selecting the Number Two to P V Narasimha Rao was not that easy. Initially, Arjun Singh, the leader of the party in the House, had the privilege of occupying the Number Two seat since Rao was not a member of either of the Houses. 

His entry into the Lok Sabha changed the situation. Wary of Singh's high profile, Rao brought him down a peg by doing away with the Number Two perch and keeping the seat next to him empty in the House. 

Rao was only following in the footsteps of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, who preferred to keep the seat next to her unoccupied to emphasise the fact that there was no Number Two.