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Uma to 'go to any length' to stop Sonia from becoming PM

PTI | ByAgence France-Presse, New Delhi
May 16, 2004 09:22 PM IST

Uma Bharti has vowed to do anything in her power to stop Congress leader Sonia Gandhi from becoming the prime minister.

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Uma Bharti vowed on Sunday to do anything in her power to stop Congress leader Sonia Gandhi from becoming prime minister after the shock defeat of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

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Bharti said she would "go to any length" to prevent Gandhi from getting the top job.

"It has been my lifelong fight to keep Gandhi away from the prime ministership," Bharti told the Zee News channel.

"How can the Congress say people have given Gandhi the mandate when they voted for a group of parties?" she said, referring to the alliance headed by the Congress party.

"Did all the people who voted for various regional parties know they would get Gandhi as prime minister? The Congress did not say who their leader would be before the polls," she said.

Sonia faced relentless criticism during the election from the BJP, which said a foreigner by birth could not understand India.

Sushma Swaraj, Parliamentary affairs minister in the outgoing Government, said on Saturday she would resign from Parliament if Gandhi became prime minister as she could not stomach calling the Congress leader "Madam Prime Minister."

Pramod Mahajan, a key strategist in the defeated Bharatiya Janata Party's campaign, said he was sympathetic to Swaraj's threat to quit.

"There are many people inside and outside politics who can't accept this idea," he said of Gandhi as prime minister.

But top leaders of both Congress and its allies have said Gandhi's foreign birth was not an issue for them.

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