Sonia Gandhi has recalled how her “heart sank” as she walked across the forecourt of the Rashtrapati Bhavan in 1999 to face a large group of journalists after staking claim to form the government, carrying assurances of support that would soon collapse.
“As I walked towards them, I could feel my heart sink. She believed the numbers would add up finally, so she met the president to present her claim. But she accepted that she had moved too quickly in trying to remove the BJP-led government.
Sonia Gandhi wrote that the Congress and its allies had gathered 233 MPs, with others assuring support.
I was facing that kind of en masse media for the first time; even with colleagues flanking me, it was an excruciating strain to appear confident,” she said about the events that followed the fall of the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government after AIADMK chief J Jayalalithaa withdrew support. “Even though we are short of some at this moment, we are confident we will reach the required number,” she said, adding “further talks with other parties” were on when questioned whether it was premature to believe that the Congress would succeed. “As it turned out, the promised support failed to materialise,” Sonia Gandhi wrote, describing the failed attempt as a result of competing ambitions among leaders involved in the talks. Several of them wanted to become prime minister which ended up producing more contenders than the coalition could accommodate, she said. Some Congress leaders were also opposed to the emerging arrangement, though Sonia Gandhi said she had no wish to become prime minister herself. She should have listened to Congress leader Arjun Singh, who had counselled caution, instead of another leader whom she did not identify and described as having later proved “thoroughly dishonest”, according to her. To a question whether bringing down the Vajpayee government was a mistake, Sonia Gandhi said it was not the correct way to see the matter. “We didn’t bring them down; it was their coalition that collapsed,” she wrote.
