Agencies/New Delhi
Sonia Gandhi’s shock decision not to take over as prime minister a decade ago followed an appeal by her son Rahul who feared she would be assassinated like her husband, according to a former family confidant.
Sonia, who was widowed when former premier Rajiv Gandhi was slain by a suicide bomber, had been expected to assume the premiership in 2004 after leading the Congress Party to an election victory.
But she instead stood aside in favour of Manmohan Singh who went on to serve two terms as prime minister before Congress suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of the Bharatiya Janata Party in May.
In a television interview to promote his new memoirs, former foreign minister Natwar Singh said that Sonia had been in tears at a family meeting after Rahul pleaded with her to turn down the job.
“He was very adamant and wouldn’t let her become prime minister,” Singh told the Headlines Today network on Wednesday night.
“As a mother she didn’t want to agonise him,” he added.
The Italian-born Sonia, who remains president of the party, caused a major upset in 2004 when she steered the Congress to victory over the BJP.
Her party’s unexpected victory triggered poisonous exchanges over the prospect that a foreigner could lead the world’s largest democracy.
Rahul was devastated by his father’s assassination by a Tamil extremist in 1991, seven years after his grandmother Indira was gunned down by two of her Sikh bodyguards while she was prime minister.
The 44-year-old Rahul was his party’s frontman in this year’s elections and spoke on the campaign trail of his grief as a child and young adult over the loss of his father and grandmother.
Natwar Singh fell out with the Congress leadership after he was sacked as foreign minister over a corruption scandal and his book contains claims that the “Machiavellian”
Sonia frequently undermined Manmohan Singh’s premiership, according to excerpts.
Natwar Singh also claimed Rajiv decided to send Indian troops to Sri Lanka in 1987 without consulting his officials.
He said Rajiv had no coherent policy on Sri Lanka.
He also alleged that Rajiv had admitted that he had been kept in the dark about Operation Brasstacks, the exercise the Indian Army conducted close to the Pakistan border in 1986-87.
Asked if Gandhi was incompetent, he said: “He was not incompetent. He was so trusting. A politician should not be so trusting.”
Asked about the book, Sonia told the NDTV television station that she planned to put the record straight herself at some stage.
“I can’t be hurt. I have seen my mother-in-law riddled by bullets, my husband dead...I am far from getting hurt with these things,” she said.
“I will write my own book and then everyone will know the truth.”
Sonia also refuted Natwar Singh’s allegation that she had access to government files.
She was backed by Manmohan Singh who said “private conversations should not be misused for capital gains.”
Natwar Singh in his book claimed that Sonia had access to government files and these were taken to her by bureaucrat Pulok Chatterji, then in the
Prime Minister’s Office.
His autobiography One life is not enough will be released today.
Congress spokesman Abhishek Manu Singhvi said Natwar Singh was sensationalising “information shared to him on sensitive issues in keeping with his ministerial rank” for commercial ends.
“We clearly refute every allegation levelled by Natwar Singh in an interview ahead of his book’s release. This sensationalisation was necessary to ensure commercial success of his book,” Singhvi said.
He said Natwar Singh had had an unceremonious exit from the Congress and his son is a Bharatiya Janata Party legislator in Rajasthan.
“Natwar Singh has been trying to join the BJP directly or indirectly for some time. And these facts contradict the facts which he has mentioned in his book,” added Singhvi.
In this photograph of June 11, 2005, Sonia Gandhi is watched by then foreign minister Natwar Singh as she delivers a speech in Moscow.
