On X, Kharge posted that the Congress welcomed the choice of the Centre, lauding Rao’s function in “nation-building”.
“Under his government, India embarked on a transformative journey with a series of economic reforms that played a pivotal role in shaping the middle class for generations to come. He also made significant contributions to India’s nuclear programme and a number of foreign policy achievements marked his tenure, including the ‘Look East’ policy,” Kharge stated.
His assertion additionally invoked Charan Singh’s “pro-farmer policies” and the vast respect that he instructions amongst “our annadatas (farmers) and khet mazdoors (agricultural labourers) in the country”.
Greater than Kharge’s adulatory assertion, nevertheless, it was Sonia’s seen discomfiture outdoors Parliament that captured the Congress’ issue in coping with the BJP’s newest curveball.
As a result of, greater than the rest, it’s the icy equation that Rao shared with Sonia that pushed him into political oblivion after his five-year time period as PM resulted in 1996.
In books authored by them, Congress veterans comparable to Natwar Singh and Ok.V. Thomas have attributed the bitterness between Rao and Sonia to the latter’s unhappiness over the gradual tempo of probe into the 1991 assassination of her husband, former PM Rajiv Gandhi (1984 to 1989), below Rao’s stewardship as PM.
Natwar Singh, who briefly served because the exterior affairs minister within the first Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) authorities, notes in his ebook One Life is Not Sufficient: “An impression was created by one or two senior members of the Congress Working Committee that she (Sonia) was not happy with the (economic) reform process and that Rao was ignoring her. Almost all the senior members of the Congress party were aware of Gandhi giving him the cold shoulder.”
At one level, data the ebook, Rao even confided in Natwar Singh that “I can take on Sonia Gandhi. But I do not want to do so. Some of her advisers have been filling her ears against me. I don’t take them seriously. Sonia’s case is different. Her attitude towards me is affecting my health. If she wants me to go, she only has to say so. I have done my best to meet all her desires and requirements promptly. You worked closely with her and must know and should know why Sonia is so hostile to me”.
By the way, Rao, who was the primary PM not belonging to the Nehru-Gandhi household to finish a five-year time period, landed the highest job by chance.
After Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination left the Congress and not using a president, as many leaders comparable to Sharad Pawar, Arjun Singh and N.D. Tiwari began vying for the publish, Rao, who was getting ready to retire, emerged because the shock decide, which finally paved his option to the PM’s publish.
The accounts of Gandhi household loyalists comparable to Mani Shankar Aiyar, nevertheless, are wholly hostile to Rao, notably over the demolition of the Babri Masjid in December 1992 when the latter was PM. For them, the Gandhi household’s aversion to Rao was extra ideological than private.
As an example, chatting with ThePrint in August forward of the launch of his autobiography Memoirs of a Maverick, through which Aiyar accuses the previous PM of “facilitating” the demolition of the mosque, he held Rao “singularly responsible” for pulling the Congress away from its secular moorings.
“It was under Narasimha Rao that the Congress started separating itself from its strong anchoring in the secularism of the Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru kind,” Aiyar stated.
On the launch of the ebook, Aiyar additionally described Rao because the “first BJP prime minister of India”.
A few years later, even after the Liberhan Fee report exonerated Rao of all prices referring to the demolition of the mosque, the Congress remained silent.
Rao was even denied a ticket to contest within the 1998 Lok Sabha elections, with then Congress president Sitaram Kesri — who was additionally unceremoniously proven the door quickly after — citing Rao’s “inability to protect the Babri Masjid” as the rationale behind it.
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‘Sonia did not want a memorial for Rao anywhere in Delhi’
After Sonia took over the reins of the Congress in 1998, the erasure of Rao’s imprint was full as he didn’t even discover a place within the newly-constituted Congress Working Committee (CWC), the very best decision-making physique of the Congress.
After his loss of life in 2004, Rao’s physique was not allowed to be taken contained in the 24, Akbar Highway, Congress headquarters in New Delhi, positioned barely 200 metres away from his official residence on Motilal Nehru Marg, and the cortege was parked outdoors its premises for folks to pay their respects.
Sanjaya Baru, who was the media advisor to former PM Manmohan Singh, wrote in his ebook The Unintentional Prime Minister that whereas Rao’s kids needed the previous PM to be cremated in Delhi, like different Congress PMs who even have memorials constructed for them, “Sonia did not want a memorial for Rao anywhere in Delhi”.
“Later that evening, I was told the Congress party had got Rao’s family to agree to fly his body out to Hyderabad by deploying Home Minister Shivraj Patil and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy to persuade them to fall in line. The Congress party refused to allow Rao’s body to be brought into the party’s headquarters on its way to the airport, and Sonia chose not to be present at the Hyderabad cremation,” wrote Baru.
Whereas Rao died a lonely man, he remained part of the Congress, regardless of the rancour and acrimony.
In 2020, the Congress tried a change in tack. Because the celebration’s Telangana unit launched a year-long centenary celebration of Rao, who was born within the state’s Warangal district, Sonia despatched a written message heaping praises on his “bold” management, saying she took pleasure in his accomplishments and contributions.
In a separate message, Rahul Gandhi additionally lauded Rao’s contribution which “continues to shape modern India”.
“From joining the Congress party in his teenage years to becoming the prime minister of the largest democracy, his remarkable political journey reflected his grit and determination,” Rahul had stated in an announcement then.
Charan Singh criticised Congress
However, Charan Singh, who was a towering farmer chief of the Congress in Uttar Pradesh within the pre and post-Independence years, didn’t simply give up the celebration in 1967, however was additionally instrumental in dissolving all of the state governments led by the Congress after the Janata Celebration got here to energy in 1977.
As dwelling minister within the Janata Celebration authorities, Charan Singh additionally acquired former PM and Congress chief Indira Gandhi arrested from her residence that 12 months.
It’s one other matter that Charan Singh’s short-lived 23-day tenure as PM, following his rift with Morarji Desai, Janata Dal chief who served as PM from 1977 to 1979, was due to the skin assist prolonged by the Congress then led by Indira Gandhi.
However as he refused to drop sure felony prices towards Indira that had led to her arrest earlier, she withdrew her assist, and the Jat chief was compelled to resign as PM in August 1979. He, nevertheless, continued as caretaker PM until January 1980.
Within the subsequent years, Charan Singh remained a bitter critic of the Congress.
He had famously berated the celebration in a speech delivered within the Uttar Pradesh meeting in 1976 for its hero worship of Indira.
“Your president says Indira is India and India is Indira. You should be ashamed. This doesn’t happen in any democratic country. It’s your weakness. It’s your mistake,” he had stated in his speech delivered in Hindi, as reported by The Indian Specific.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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