Kolkata, Aug 11: Former West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu has given his blessings to Sonia Gandhi as a possible Prime Minister of the country. In an interview to a private TV channel before the politburo meeting in Delhi on Tuesday, Basu said that Sonia's foreign origin was not an issue. He added that the BJP should fight the elections on policy and not personality.


Basu is hoping that Sonia will succeed where he did not – in providing an alternative to the BJP and becoming Prime Minister. The foreign origin gun that the BJP is holding to her head, he says, has no future. If he had once dismissed her as a housewife, that is now firmly in the past.
"She's an Indian citizen, how can I say she is a foreigner? But I have said, and which is correct, that she was a housewife. Since the 114-year-old Congress couldn't find a leader among the party members, so the Congress chose her. I think she's learning politics," said Basu.
Bureau Report