Sanjaya Baru's book unethical, self-promoting, says PM's daughter

In a rare public interview discussing her father, Manmohan Singh’s daughter Upinder Singh has hit out at the book by former media advisor to the PM Sanjaya Baru and called it an ‘audacious account’.

Singh who is a Professor of history at the Delhi University made the remarks to The Indian Express and said that that while she was not speaking on behalf of the PM, the book had left the family angry.

“While I am not speaking on behalf of the Prime Minister, we are extremely angry at the exaggerated level of access the author has ascribed to himself. It is an audacious account with so-called quotes, of even the Prime Minister, which have been recorded as facts,” she said.

The timing of the book, which was released just in the middle of Lok Sabha elections 2014 is also a sore point for the party. The PM’s daughter told IE that where the timing is concerned, it cannot be seen without any political motive.

“I have written several books and know that authors have a say in the timing of the release. To me, there are other reasons for the timing. It is absurd to say there is no political motive,” she told the paper. She also said that Baru had told her that the book would ’naturally’ be out after the elections.

Singh also said that Baru was trying to overstate his own importance through the book. “He is holding forth and projecting himself in the centre of events which is not true and he had no access to files. It is not as if he was the Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister,” she said.

As far as the relationship between Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh, his daughter said, it is one of utmost trust and respect. She also says that the idea that the PM wanted to cling on to the second which was wrong.

Sanjaya Baru’s book, The Accidental Prime Minister: The making and unmaking of Manmohan Singh,  has alleged that Manmohan Singh had accepted the Congress President Sonia Gandhi as the one power centre in UPA. The book also conveys that Manmohan Singh deliberately did not assert himself and also alleges that in 2009 voters were happy with the way Manmohan Singh had steered the economy out of trouble during the global crisis of October 2008, but Sonia’s inner circle did not want the credit to go to Manmohan.

The Prime Minister’s Office has  slammed the book and has dismissed  it “as an attempt to misuse a privileged positionand access to high office to gain credibility and to apparently exploit it for commercial gains. The commentary smacks of fiction and coloured views of the former advisor (i.e. Baru).”