I was not isolated: Rao

By Our Special Correspondent

BANGALORE, MARCH 19. The former Prime Minister, Mr. P. V. Narasimha Rao, has described as optical illusion the view that he had been isolated in the Congress for the last few years.

Talking to reporters, he said that what the press and people outside did not know was that the AICC chief, Ms. Sonia Gandhi, was always close to him. As no plenary session of the party had been held after she became the president (until the one which concluded on Sunday), those outside could not know the truth.

At the Plenary, Ms. Gandhi had given a seat to Mr. Rao next to her on the dais. Though Mr. Rao did not speak, he presented a note on `Liberalisation and the Public Sector'. Mr. Rao said that he had never missed a single Congress plenary since the 1938 Haripura Congress presided over by Netaji. He had been an AICC member since 1951.

Asked if Ms. Gandhi sought his advice on any matter, he said she could have 100 advisers. Nobody could monopolise advising the president. He did not want to talk on the future course of action of the party, and directed the questioner to ask Ms.Gandhi about it.

Mr. Rao, who had come to attend a get-together organised in his honour by the State's senior Congress leader and Chairman of the Administrative Reforms Commission, Mr. Haranahalli Ramaswamy, remarked that it was ``unfair'' to ask him to address the press.

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Section  : National
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