After PM’s 6/10, Sonia rates govt: can’t do more

A day after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh gave his government six marks out of ten and said he had ‘‘never been satisfied with 60 ...

A day after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh gave his government six marks out of ten and said he had ‘‘never been satisfied with 60 per cent’’, chairperson Sonia Gandhi spoke up for the UPA on its one year in office: ‘‘I am bad in mathematics, so I won’t go into numbers but I am satisfied. I don’t think we could have done more, considering how a coalition works.’’

‘‘The Prime Minister is a self-effasive person. His personality is such. It is in his nature not to exaggerate,’’ she told the Delhi press corps after inviting them over to the National Advisory Council office lawns this evening.

Reminded that Singh had given her a 10 out of 10, she said: ‘‘He is very generous.’’

Story continues below this ad

On the Congress experience of leading a coalition, she said, ‘‘It is our first experience and we have not done badly.’’

Asked whether she would ever reconsider her decision not to become PM, she said: ‘‘The question does not arise at the moment. Why should I want to become the Prime Minister now? There’s a Prime Minister in place, a man of integrity, who is doing an excellent job.’’

A reporter asked her whether she thought India was finally shining. Pat came the answer: ‘‘Shine cannot come in one year, it is unrealistic to expect it.’’ But how do you look at the last one year? ‘‘Well, I was a year younger.’’

As she took questions from the media, a battery of Congress leaders looked on: Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee, her political secretary Ahmed Patel, general secretaries Ambika Soni, Digvijay Singh, Janardan Dwivedi, Satyavrat Chaturvedi, Margaret Alva and Mukul Wasnik, treasurer Motilal Vora, Minister of State in PMO Prithviraj Chavan. But Sonia needed no assistance.

Story continues below this ad

Her fluency in Hindi also surprised many. When a reporter asked her if Congress would have been more comfortable with a single-party rule, Sonia said: ‘‘Aapka sawaal kalpanik hai (your question is hypothetical).’’ Another reminded her of the poor Congress performance in Bihar. And she had a counter-query: ‘‘Hum kahan the Bihar mein? (Where were we in Bihar?)’’

But on Jharkhand, she maintained: ‘‘We could have formed a government.’’ She did admit to mistakes in the Assembly polls: ‘‘The list is long.’’ As for defeat, ‘‘the responsibility is normally with the boss.’’

She also confessed that there was infighting within the Congress. ‘‘But we have much less kit-kit than others.’’ The dig was obvious: she was referring to the BJP, rocked by differences within. But when someone mentioned it, she simply said: ‘‘I will not comment on their internal affairs.’’

Nor was she willing to get into the Laloo-Paswan tussle: ‘‘Bihar is Bihar, let us leave it at that.’’ On Laloo’s continuance in the Cabinet, she said, ‘‘We should remember what a former Prime Minister (Vajpayee) said: it is the prerogative of the Prime Minister to decide who should be in his ministry.’’ Dismissing suggestions that Laloo had been isolated over the EC episode, she said: ‘‘Not at all, we are all with him.’’