Former PM Manmohan Singh asked me if he should quit after Rahul ordinance episode: Montek Ahluwalia

It is to be noted that former PM Manmohan Singh was on a visit to the US when Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had rejected the ordinance brought by then Congress-led UPA government at the Centre to negate a Supreme Court verdict on convicted lawmakers.

The former deputy chairman of the now-defunct Planning Commission, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, on Sunday (February 17) said that after the Rahul Gandhi ordinance-trashing episode of 2013, the then prime minister Manmohan Singh had asked him whether he should step down as prime minister of India.

Ahluwalia said that he told PM Singh that it was not appropriate for him to resign on this issue. It is to be noted that Singh was on a visit to the US when former Congress president Rahul Gandhi had rejected the ordinance brought by then Congress-led UPA government at the Centre to negate a Supreme Court verdict on convicted lawmakers. Terming the ordinance as "complete nonsense", Rahul had publicly said that it should be "torn up and thrown away".

"I was part of the PM's delegation in New York and my brother Sanjeev, who had retired from the IAS, telephoned to say he had written a piece that was very critical of the PM. He had emailed it to me and said he hoped I didn't find it embarrassing," Ahluwalia was quoted as saying by PTI.

"The first thing I did was to take the text across to the PM's suite because I wanted him to hear about it first from me. He read it in silence and, at first, made no comment. Then, he suddenly asked me whether I thought he should resign," Ahluwalia wrote in his new book "Backstage: The Story behind India's High Growth Years".

"I thought about it for a while and said I did not think a resignation on this issue was appropriate. I wondered then whether I was simply saying what I thought he would like to hear but on reflection I am convinced I gave him honest advice," he added.

The ordinance-thrashing episode was debated on TV channels and other platforms even after Singh returned to New Delhi. "Most of my friends agreed with Sanjeev. They felt the PM had for too long accepted the constraints under which he had to operate and this had tarnished his reputation. The rubbishing of the ordinance was seen as demeaning the office of the PM and justified resigning on principle. I did not agree," Ahluwalia wrote, adding that the incident exposed an important fault line in the UPA.

"The Congress saw Rahul as the natural leader of the party and wanted him to take a larger role. In this situation, as soon as Rahul expressed his opposition to the ordinance, senior Congress politicians, who had earlier supported the proposed ordinance in the Cabinet and even defended it publicly, promptly changed their position," he said.