She also shared that a persistent concern about her husband Rajiv Gandhi being assassinated unfortunately came true. Three months before the 2004 Lok Sabha election verdict brought the Congress-led coalition to power, Sonia Gandhi told NDTV that she had never wanted to enter politics.
“At the same time, I believe we have to focus on the poor. These are not mutually exclusive… “Where is this feel-good factor coming from? Frankly, I don’t know.
I have not seen it anywhere in the places which I have visited,” she said, three months before the 2004 general election results showed the Congress-led coalition won.
The main reason behind her decision to join public life was to stop the BJP, she had said, and also indicated that Manmohan Singh would have a “key role” if the Congress returned to power – an event that actually happened. The remarks made during an interview with journalist Shekhar Gupta for NDTV’s Walk The Talk in February 2004 got new significance after Sonia Gandhi disclosed in her memoir, Belonging: A Journey of Love, that she had already told her children she would “absolutely not” become prime minister. On what eventually drew her into politics, Gandhi told NDTV that Congress leaders had sought her help when the party was struggling. She said she felt she was failing in her duty whenever she passed photographs of her husband and mother-in-law in her drawing room. People from the Congress who authored economic reforms to begin with, particularly Dr Manmohan Singh, will have a key role in this,” Sonia Gandhi said. After the election, Sonia Gandhi rejected the prime ministership and proposed Manmohan Singh as leader of the Congress parliamentary party, a decision which her memoir said was taken months earlier when Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi asked whether she would accept the post. In the NDTV interview, Sonia Gandhi also rejected the Vajpayee government’s “India Shining” account, citing unemployment and inadequate investment in agriculture. Finally, the economist whom Sonia Gandhi said would have a “key role” became the prime minister.
