New Delhi, May 11
Under attack from more and more senior Congress leaders for his remarks against the Congress high command, HRD minister Arjun Singh today sought to play down the controversy saying it was “needless and irrelevant”.
The minister in an attempt to buy peace with the party high command came out with a statement here where he asserted his loyalty with the Nehru-Gandhi family and sought to win back the lost ground. The statement came a day after his remarks on loyalty as also internal democracy in the party created a storm and saw party chief Sonia Gandhi giving him a cold shoulder and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh distanced himself from the controversy.
This is a closed chapter as far as I am concerned, the septuagenarian leader said, adding that he was pained at the needless and irrelevant controversies that were sought to be raised on the book on him published by Kanhaiya Lal Nandan and presented to President Pratibha Patil two days ago.
He said his loyalty to the Nehru-Gandhi family had been unflinching since 1960, when he met first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.
The former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister released a one-page statement and tried to put all controversies behind him. Interpretation of the book, "Mohe Kahan Vishram" (no rest for me), has caused me discomfort, he said.
Trying to build bridges, the minister, who has revelled in controversies in the past few years, said: “I shall also do everything to maintain the loyalty and commitment to the remaining members of the family till I live”.
Incidentally, the word remaining is important, as according to some reports when he spoke about the Nehru-Gandhi family in his book, he had spoken only about Indira Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi.
The happenings of the last two-three days seem to have hammered home a message for the Congress leader from MP. His statement came after many senior party leaders lashed out at him for his public outbursts against the party leadership, apparently at Gandhi and her son Rahul, who, it is believed, is being groomed as the future prime ministerial candidate of the party.
In his interview in the book, Arjun Singh had said there was no inner party democracy in the Congress and that “the evaluation of loyalty (in the present Congress) is done in a very narrow sense”.
Incidentally, Singh has been snubbed twice by the Congress high command in the past one month.
Before this latest incident, his statement that there was nothing wrong in projecting Rahul Gandhi as the prime ministerial candidate in the next elections got immediate rebuff. The AICC said Sonia and Rahul wanted to stay away from an atmosphere of sycophancy.
