Sonia Gandhi weakened Manmohan Singh, created parallel power structure: Book

Zee Media Bureau

New Delhi: In a highly-sensational claim, especially in the midst of a General Election, a book has alleged that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had been pushed to surrender to Congress chief Sonia Gandhi. The book, which will surely send ripples across the political establishment for its timing, has claimed that Sonia Gandhi slowly chipped away at the authority of the Prime Minister`s Office, created a parallel power structure and left a weakened prime minister who "allowed himself to become an object of such ridicule in his second term in office." Calling Dr Singh as the weak prime minister, Sanjaya Baru, the former media adviser to the PM, has revealed in his just-published 301-page book that it was Sonia Gandhi who used to take decisions on key appointments to the Cabinet and to the PMO. Baru also quoted Singh as having told him that there cannot be two centres of power. "That creates confusion. I have to accept that the party president is the centre of power. The government is answerable to the party." In the tell-all memoir of his days in the PMO during UPA 1, Baru, the PM`s media adviser between 2004 and 2008, revealed that Dr Singh had tried to bar the induction of A Raja of DMK even before the information regarding 2G spectrum scam was revealed. However, “after asserting himself for a full twenty-four hours, caved in to pressure both his own party and the DMK", wrote Baru. Baru, however, added that the PM succeeded in keeping TR Baalu away from the Cabinet. The book "The Accidental Prime Minister--The Making and Unmaking Of Manmohan Singh", published by Penguin, also alleged that the PM wanted to appoint his principal economic adviser C Rangarajan, "the comrade with whom he had battled the balance of payments crisis of 1991-92", as finance minister. However, “Sonia nipped that hope in the bud by offering the finance portfolio to Pranab (Mukherjee), without even consulting him”. The former aide of the PM also claimed that the loyalty of the Congress MPs was just towards Sonia Gandhi. "They (Congress MPs) did not see loyalty to the PM as a political necessity, nor did Dr Singh seek loyalty in the way Sonia and her aides sought it." Baru called Sonia`s "renunciation" of power a `political tactic`, not an "inner voice" as she claimed after the Congress` victory in 2004 General Elections. The formation of the National Advisory Council (NAC) in 2004 indicated that Sonia`s renunciation of power was a political tactic. NAC, headed by the Congress president, led to a parallel policy structure. Dr Singh was not too comfortable with it, said Baru. Baru also alleged that the PM wanted to reappoint him as a secretary in the PMO after the 2009 victory but had succumbed to the Congress pressure to keep him out. "To tell the truth, I was dismayed by the PM`s display of spinelessness," he said. Giving several instances of Manmohan Singh capitulating to the extra-constitutional authority of Sonia Gandhi and refusing to assert himself, Baru stated: "Initially, I saw his subservience as an aspect of his shy and self-effacing personality, but over time I felt, like many, that this might be his strategy for political survival.” “Was it just unquestioned loyalty to the leader of a survival instinct that prompted him to remain? Whatever the motive, his image took a fatal blow," Baru said. "So I, like millions of his middle-class supporters, feel tragically cheated that he has allowed himself to become an object of such ridicule in his second term in office, in the process devaluing the office of the prime minister," Baru said in the book. Going into damage-control mode, PMO`s current media advisor, Pankaj Pachauri, dismissed Baru`s book, saying it is "an attempt to misuse a privileged position and access to high office to gain credibility and to apparently exploit it for commercial gains. The commentary smacks of fiction and coloured views of the former advisor.” “The question about comments of the former media adviser was raised by senior editors when they met the prime minister in October last year. His answer was `Do not believe all he is saying`".