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Incensed by some of the ‘revelations’ by expelled Congress leader and former external affairs minister Natwar Singh in his autobiography One Life is Not Enough, Congress President Sonia Gandhi on Thursday said that she, too, would set pen to paper to “bring out the truth”.
“I will write my own book and then you will come to know everything,” she told reporters here on Thursday. She stated she was indeed “serious” about writing because “the only way truth will come out is if I write”.
In a TV interview on Wednesday, Natwar Singh had said it was Sonia’s son Rahul Gandhi, who asked her not to take up the Prime Minister’s post in 2004, as he feared she would be assassinated if she accepted the post. Sonia Gandhi had claimed it was her “inner voice” that prevented her from taking up the top job.
Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi said Natwar Singh was “distorting facts” and that his comments were tantamount to “double betrayal”.
In the TV interview, Natwar Singh had also said important government files were routinely sent to Sonia Gandhi by a PMO official, a charge flatly rejected by former prime minister Manmohan Singh, who termed Natwar Singh’s revelations ‘marketing gimmick’.
Speaking to reporters in Parliament, Sonia Gandhi said she was not hurt by Natwar Singh’s revelations, saying she had “seen worse things” like her husband Rajiv Gandhi being assassinated and her mother-in law Indira Gandhi riddled with bullets. “I am far from getting hurt from these things. These things do not affect me,” she said.
Manmohan Singh slammed Natwar Singh's book as well as another book by his former media adviser Sanjaya Baru, The Accidental Prime Minister, saying: “This is their way of trying to market their product.”
Summarily rejecting the claims made both by Baru and Singh that files were sent to 10, Janpath, Manmohan Singh said: “I had contradicted it then (a few months ago when Baru’s book was released). I repeat that this is not true.”
On Natwar Singh’s book, Manu Singhvi said: “It is unfortunate that a person who rose to occupy a top post due to Congress and was made aware of many sensitive facts, misuses and distorts those facts after being removed and publishes baseless things.”
On another revelation by Natwar Singh that Sonia Gandhi had met him in order to stop him from writing the book, Bharatiya Janata Party spokesperson Shahnawaz Hussain said: “Sonia
Gandhi does not have a reply to the issues raised by Natwar Singh. She is not telling if she had gone to Natwar Singh to stop him from writing the book.”
He also attacked Rahul Gandhi saying, “He says ‘I want to live for the country’, so now he should tell that if a soldier gets scared then who will protect our country. The chair of Prime Minister is a crown of thorns, your life is at stake there but to serve the country people accept it.”
