Manmohan Singh always acted on 'Nation First'; didn't go to Pak as he felt it wasn't right: Sachin Pilot

New Delhi: Former prime minister Manmohan Singh always acted on the principle of 'Nation First' in his long political career and did not visit Pakistan during his prime ministerial tenure as he felt it was not right, senior Congress leader Sachin Pilot said on Thursday.

Pilot said the list of those who went to Pakistan is long and includes the likes of former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, former deputy PM LK Advani and current PM Narendra Modi, but does not include Singh and former Congress president Sonia Gandhi.

He made the remarks at an event at the India Islamic Cultural Centre in remembrance of Manmohan Singh, where the likes of former deputy chairman of the Planning Commission, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Congress leader Rajiv Shukla, ex-MP Shahid Siddiqui and media advisor to Singh, Pankaj Pachauri, spoke.

Singh's daughter and historian Upinder Singh, and IICC President and former Union Minister Salman Khurshid were also present on the occasion.

Pilot said a lot of credit for India emerging as a nuclear power goes to Singh because he took a political stand and risked his government for the nuclear agreement with the US, because he thought it was best for the country.

"Rajiv (Shukla) ji said he (Singh) could not go to Pakistan, visit his village, who was stopping him? Many times invitation would have come, but he did not go because he felt that it was not right to go," Pilot, who served as a minister in Singh's UPA-II government, said.

"Who all went to Pakistan? I don't want to go into that in detail, as it is a long list. Advani ji went, Vajpayee ji went, Modi ji went, but Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh are not there on that list. It is easy to say 'Nation First' but very difficult to act upon, and Dr Singh did in his long political career," Pilot said.

He said Singh treated him as an equal member of the team when he was a junior minister.

"It was such a privilege to work with a person who treated you as an equal member of the team. If PM gives so much space and respects other people's views, it gives a different message," he said.

Pilot said people should also not forget that socialist policies were introduced during his tenure, such as the loan waiver, MGNREGA and poverty alleviation.

"These days, we are seeing what has come of the so-called scams and talk of presumptive loss. The whole country is seeing what he did as a nationalist," he said.

Pilot recalled Singh's remarks on the 1984 anti-Sikh riots and asked which PM had courage to say 'I hang my head in shame' and that this should not have happened.

In his remarks, Shukla said Singh took action against Pakistan in the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks, but did not propagate it.

Pachauri said he never used to bring religion into the work of the country.

Singh, 92, passed away at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences here on December 26, 2024.

He was the PM for two terms in the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government from 2004 to 2014. As finance minister under former Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao, he was the architect of economic reforms in 1991 that changed the course of India's economic trajectory.