Congress President Sonia Gandhi did not like P V Narasimha Rao though she made him the prime minister after the death of her husband, former party leader K Natwar Singh says in his autobiography.
He describes the Congress president as ambitious and authoritarian.
Gandhi “wasn’t very fond” of Rao, the former external affairs minister and friend of the Gandhi family wrote in One Life is Not Enough.
Rao, who was prime minister for five years until 1996, was aware of Gandhi’s attitude, the 410-page book says.
Rao “seemed uncharacteristically agitated and restless” when they met one day in December 1994, he wrote in the book. The book quotes Rao as telling Singh: “I can take on Sonia Gandhi. But I do not want to do so. Some of her advisers have been filling her ears against me. I don’t take them seriously. Sonia’s case is different.
“Her attitude towards me is affecting my health. If she wants me to go, she only has to say so.
“I have done my best to meet all her desires and requirements promptly. You worked closely with her and must know why Sonia is hostile to me,” he said.
Rao was reportedly so eager to get into Gandhi’s good books that he had “a clandestine rendezvous” with Mohamed Younus, a friend of the Gandhis at Singh’s suggestion to reach out to her.
“That P V (Narasimha Rao) agreed to such a meeting was in itself a clear indication of how keen he was for a patch-up with Sonia. But it did not happen.”
Such was the Gandhi family’s antipathy to Rao that after he died in 2004, his body was sent to his native Hyderabad for the last rites. He is the only former prime minister who does not have a memorial in Delhi.
Singh paints an unflattering picture of the 67-year old Congress head, labelling her an at-times “Machiavellian” leader who has been “coarsened” by politics.
The remarks come at a fraught time for Gandhi, having recently presided over her party’s slide from a decade in power to its worst-ever defeat in national elections in April and May.
Singh, who was expelled from the party, places the blame for the drubbing on Gandhi, alleging her grip on the Congress Party has been both complete and destructive.
“What Sonia Gandhi has achieved is to reduce the Congress, one of the greatest political parties of the world, to a rump of forty-four members in the Lok Sabha,” he wrote.
Unsurprisingly, Congress has come out swinging in defence of its leader.
“We note the necessity to sensationalise such matters on the eve of publication because that is vital to increase sales,” Congress spokesman Abhishek Singhvi said on Thursday.
“It is, of course, highly regrettable that persons who have enjoyed high positions of power and entrusted to them by and on behalf of the Congress Party ... misuse and distort such confidentiality for commercial purposes.”
