Sonia refutes claims of Patel, Nehru differences

Gandhi also said the country’s first prime minister and his home minister shared deep respect for each other though they may have differed in some of their views.

“The claim by some writers that there were unbearable disagreements between Sardar Patel and Pandit Nehru is to distort history,” Sonia said in a written message read out at a function held to inaugurate a community hall at Sardar Smarak here by President Pratibha Patil.

With the Sardar Patel tug-of-war on between the Congress and the BJP, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, addressing the same function, claimed that had Patel been the the first prime minister of independent India (instead of Nehru), there would have been no farmers’ suicides or terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir.

Jammu and Kashmir would have been a peaceful state had Sardar Vallabhai Patel been the prime minister after the country got Independence, Modi said.