My political career made and unmade by Gandhis: Mani Shankar Aiyar

December 15, 2024 18:10

Veteran Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar has said the irony of his life was that his political career was "made by the Gandhis and unmade by the Gandhis".

Aiyar also said for 10 years he was not given the opportunity to meet Sonia Gandhi one-on-one or spend any meaningful time with Rahul Gandhi except once.

In an interview with PTI Videos on his forthcoming book A Maverick in Politics published by Juggernaut, Aiyar said he "has had it all" but, at the end of the day, he was "completely isolated in the party".

However, he maintained that he was still a member of the party and asserted, "I'll never shift, and I will certainly not go to the BJP".

Asked about the patronage from the Gandhis, Aiyar said, "If you want to be successful in politics as an individual, you have to have a very strong base. Either you have a constituency where you're not defeated or you're undefeatable, or you have a caste base or you have a religious base. I had none of these."

"I only had patronage. I had the favour of (former) prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. I then had the favour of Sonia Gandhi. But that's a very, very uncertain basis on which to be in politics. So when Sonia Gandhi got angry with me in 2010, that patronage got withdrawn. And yet not completely withdrawn," he said.

Aiyar added that on a personal level, she continued to have some affection for him.

"So it was a very slow decline. But it was a decline that took place over a period of about 15 years... And then, once Rahul Gandhi came in, I thought it was going to go up. Because he said to me that where he used to agree with me 75 per cent, he said 'now I agree with you 100 per cent'," the former Union minister said. -- PTI

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