Ex-congress veteran Margaret Alva, who had resigned as general secretary of the party, after she alleged that party tickets were sold during the elections in Karnataka in May 2008, has now hit out at Congress leaders in an interview.
“Tickets were being sold at local level, that’s why we lost. Sonia asked me why I was spoke out before Karnataka elections,” she said in a TV interview to INDIA TODAY.
She added, “Even A.K. Antony got the better of me when I spoke of reality.”
“I told her I will send in my resignation,” she said. Sonia agreed and told her that she will bring her back to the party.
Everybody in the party, according to her wanted her to stay but Sonia decided otherwise.
Alva was one of the Congress’s most experienced, managers. In her entire political life, she has never hid from speaking out against anything wrong.
Manmohan Singh always said that he wanted to make her a minister but he never pushed enough.
“Decision making in the Congress is very centralised. I was in-charge of 8 states, and have given my life to the party. All I expected was a little bit of consultation,” she said, ” We lost in 1977 because Indira didn’t know what was happening.”
Talking about the arbitrary ad-hoc ways in which the decisions in the party were made, Alva said that, even though she was general secretary and Sushil Kumar Shinde was present, suddenly to everyone’s shock and dismay, Vilasrao Deshmukh was made the Chief Minister.
In another incident Sushil Kumar Shinde himself was appointe governer of Andhra Pradesh, out of they blue even though he never asked for it.
Even Alva got a call from Sonia and was told that she has been recommonded for governership of Uttarakhand, and the call got disconnected.
“I was deeply hurt when my son was sidelined,” Alva said.
Earlier, Sonia Gandhi, whose differences with P.V. Narsimha Rao were known quite openly, was using the party to keep tabs on him. In turn Rao also put IB after Alva to check where her loyalties lay.
“But I was deeply hurt by how Rao was treated after death,” she said.