When Deve Gowda, Mulayam Singh surprised Lok Sabha

Vibha Sharma
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, February 15

While Samajwadi Party (SP) patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav stunned everyone with his cryptic pro-Narendra Modi statement, there was another moment in the last sitting of the 16th Lok Sabha, equally political and equally interesting.      

It was when Congress leader Sonia Gandhi said she did not want to be Prime Minister during the UPA tenure as a one-line intervention during former prime minister HD Deve Gowda’s valedictory speech. 

Gowda said Gandhi could have become PM during the UPA tenures between 2004 and 2014, playing to the Congress gallery, while Mulayam played a spoilsport for the anti-BJP ‘Mahagathbandhan’ being formulated by Opposition leaders, including son Akhilesh Yadav. 

While the BJP members on the Treasury Benches gleefully watched the two veterans, observers commented no wonder the saffron leadership was “so wary” of its own seniors.

According to Gowda, “Some people are debating her citizenship. In the last 30 years, this was not an issue. But some people have raised the issue that on one occasion she (Sonia Gandhi) was unable to become Prime Minister.

On this, a visibly uncomfortable Sonia said, “I did not want to (be Prime Minister).”

Then, Gowda said: “In a way, you decided not to become Prime Minister, but I remember an incident when Vajpayee sat on a day-long ‘Prayashchit Satyagrah’ near the Rashtrapati Bhavan.

“On that occasion, I had said in Bhopal that ‘Vajpayee is a great man but why should he hold a satyagraha for a day?’ Then the press people asked me, ‘Are you asking for his resignation?’

“I told them, why not? Then they asked who would be the next PM? I said why not Madam Sonia Gandhi who was the Leader of Opposition? What is the citizenship issue? I myself raised the issue in Bhopal. That is what I am saying.”

It was then that Gandhi acknowledged the clarification of Gowda’s statement.

Politically, it was read as an acknowledgement that the Congress’s ally in Karnataka is not averse to seeing her in the role in future. 

So far as SP patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav is concerned, he wished that all members of the present Lok Sabha—and that includes some 300-plus members of the ruling BJP-led NDA—would return to the next Lok Sabha. 

Not just this, he also hoped that Modi would be back as Prime Minister. “I wish pradhan mantriji becomes pradhan mantri again,” he said, pointing towards Prime Minister Narendra Modi much to the glee of the Treasury Benches and the chagrin of the leaders sitting with him on the Opposition Benches.