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My children broke news of Cong win to me: Sonia
And when the realisation sunk in, she called Manmohan Singh to tell him that he would have to be the prime minister, reports Vir Sanghvi.
How did Sonia Gandhi find out that the BJP had lost the last general election and that the Congress would now form the government? By her own account, she was among the last to know.
In an exclusive interview to Hindustan Times and NDTV, Gandhi said that she had refused to watch television that morning because "whenever there are elections I never watch television. I would rather not spend hours of tension. I just try and busy myself with other things."
Eventually, she received phone calls telling her about the result, "First from Rahul and Priyanka and then from my other colleagues." Even then, she said, she refused to believe that her party had won. "I kept telling them, 'Wait, just wait till the end. Don't rush to conclusions'."
When the realisation had sunk in, she said, she called Dr Manmohan Singh to tell him that he would have to be the prime minister.
Dr Singh, she remembers, was not effusive. "I think he's a person who keeps his emotions to himself. Also, I suppose, he was rather surprised."
According to Mrs Gandhi, though, Dr Singh needn't have been surprised. In 1999, when the Congress nearly formed the government, she had gone and seen the then president KR Narayanan along with Manmohan Singh and told him that Dr Singh was the Congress's candidate for prime minister.
Why had she ruled herself out? "I hadn't even fought an election. I did not have the mandate or the constituency. How could I have become the prime minister?"
And why did she prefer Dr Singh?
"Well, I think the main thing is that he is a person of great integrity. I would say that was the key thing for him. He is an experienced person, he has been in various positions of responsibility, in Opposition, in the bureaucracy and in the government."
Had her reluctance in 2004 been influenced by her foreign birth? "No. The fact that the Congress party won with a larger number of seats defeated that very argument," she said about the videshi bahu controversy.
