Rah-rah Rajiv

Union Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar, who had earlier gone public with his reservations against the Indo-US nuclear deal, revised his stance at the Cabinet meeting last Thursday. While he congratulated Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his team for securing the NSG waiver, the irrepressible minister asserted that it was the late Rajiv Gandhi8217;s espousal of a time-bound nuclear disarmament plan 8212; enunciated at the UN General Assembly in 1988 8212; that got the UPA Government the clearance. In the past 20 years, nothing has been done to follow up on the former prime minister8217;s plan, rued Aiyar. For once, his remarks pleased Congressmen no end. A day after the NSG granted the waiver, Congress president Sonia Gandhi and a group of Cabinet ministers had called on the Prime Minister to congratulate him. Sonia and Singh had a closed-door meeting, emerging from which she goaded the PM to say what he had told her inside. The PM obliged, recalling how Rajiv8217;s nuclear disarmament plan was the basis on which India had successfully argued its case at Vienna.