M A I N   N E W S

PMO rubbishes Baru’s claims, says no files shown to Sonia

New Delhi, April 13
The PMO today hit out at Sanjaya Baru, former media adviser, saying his book contending that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was undermined by Congress chief Sonia Gandhi smacks of “fiction” and is a “coloured” view and rubbished as “baseless and mischievous” that its files were seen by her.

“The statement being attributed to a former media adviser to the Prime Minister that PMO files were seen by the Congress president, Smt. Sonia Gandhi is completely baseless and mischievous. It is categorically denied that any PMO file has ever been shown to Smt. Sonia Gandhi,” the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) spokesman Pankaj Pachauri said in a statement here.

Pachauri was responding to the claims by Baru in his book ‘Accidental Prime Minister - The Making and Unmaking of Manmohan Singh’ and comments to media that the Prime Minister’s Principal Secretary Pulok Chatterjee would seek “instructions” from Gandhi on important PMO decisions.

Criticising Baru, the PMO statement said, “The book written by the former media adviser is an attempt to misuse a privileged position and access to high office to gain credibility and to apparently exploit it for commercial gain. The commentary smacks of fiction and coloured views of a former adviser.”

The PMO statement came amidst strong attack by the Opposition on Gandhi and the Prime Minister, using the claims by Baru.

Baru today claimed that the book is “very balanced” and also highlighted the achievements of the UPA but said the media had only focused on the criticism in it.

“I have said in my introduction that the book says both good and critical things,” he said. “More than 50 per cent of the book records the facts where he took decisions, where he showed resolve...This was a PM(Manmohan) who did a lot and the book records that,” he added.

Senior BJP leaders, including L K Advani and Arun Jaitley, attacked the ruling Congress and Manmohan Singh in connection with the book, saying it is a confirmation of what the world already knew that he is a “weak” PM and Gandhi had the last word in government matters.

In his book, Baru has written, “Pulok, who was inducted into the Manmohan Singh PMO at the behest of Sonia Gandhi, had regular, almost daily, meetings with Sonia at which he was said to brief her on the key policy issues of the day and seek her instructions on important files to be cleared by the PM.

“Indeed, Pulok was the single most point of regular contact between PM and Sonia. He was also the PMO’s main point of contact with the NAC, a high profile advisory body chaired by Sonia Gandhi, with social activists as members. It was sometimes dubbed the shadow Cabinet,” says the book. — PTI

‘Baseless, mischievous allegations’

The statement being attributed to a former media adviser to the Prime Minister that PMO files were seen by the Congress president, Sonia Gandhi is completely baseless and mischievous. It is categorically denied that any PMO file has ever been shown to Sonia Gandhi

— Pankaj Pachauri

BJP reaction

The world already knows what he (Baru) has said but the book is an official confirmation. When I said for the first time that among all our PMs he (Singh) is the weakest, then my own colleagues said he is a nice man and why criticise him so much. I said I feel sad and had sympathy for him.