According to old congress loyalist Margaret Alva, Sonia reacted to the Rao government's decision to appeal against the quashing of the Bofors case, saying, "Does he (Rao) want to send me to jail?" The claims are made in her yet to be released book hit the Congress just as it was emerging from the shock of revelations by veterans M L Fotedar and Natwar Singh.
Congress was stung again by revelations made in an autobiography, by the old congress loyalist Margaret Alva hitting out at Sonia Gandhi's style of functioning. What may hurt Congress now is Alva's claim that Wolfgang Michel, father of Christian Michel of AgustaWestland chopper scam, may have had links to an influential member of the Gandhi family during the Indira regime.
When the Rajiv Gandhi government was considering overruling Supreme Court’s verdict in Shah Bano case, then Union minister Margaret Alva had advised the PM not to succumb to pressure from Muslim clergies. “Get divorced and come to me. I will tell you where to go,” he had shot back.
In her autobiography, Courage and Commitment, that will soon hit stands, Alva notes the government bringing a law to nullify the judgment marked Congress’s “slide”. Alva said that Congress “expected him (Rajiv) to take a stand,” but “he gave in”.
Alva, with decades of experience in Parliament and having served as governors in the states of Rajasthan and Uttarakhand, is in a panel to enhance Congress’s prospects in Karnataka. It details her experiences with Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, P V Narasimha Rao and Sonia Gandhi. It also has a letter that she has wrote to Sonia when she forced her to resign as AICC general secretary in 2008 after she alleged that tickets for Karnataka elections were being sold.
She said that she was hurt at the way Congress treated Rao, that his body was not allowed to be placed in the AICC headquarters. “He was a Congress president. He should have got his due in his death.”
She said Rao and Sonia shared “a bit of a cold relationship”. “He was unnerved by her aloofness. She didn’t, in her early days, communicate too much and Rao didn’t know what was on her mind.”
The book quotes Sonia as saying, “What has the Congress government done for me? This house was allotted to me by the Chandra Shekhar government”.
About the present Congress decline, she said “It’s very unfair to say it is going down because of him (Rahul). Do you think the state leaders are doing very well?”
By Premji
