When Indira, Rajiv, Rao and Sonia faced Manmohan’s resignation threats

Throughout his political career, the ex Prime Minister used the weapon of resignation to steer his course to the shore he wanted.

New Delhi: At eight crucial junctures in his career, Manmohan Singh used the weapon of resignation to steer his course to the shore he wanted – Prime Ministers Rajiv Gandhi and PV Narasimha Rao and Congress president Sonia Gandhi faced the threats but did not let him go.

Singh calling it quits came when Rajiv called Planning Commission members a “bunch of jokers” in the mid-1980s, during Harshad Mehta securities scam and pressure to roll back fertilisers price when he was Finance Minister and twice as Prime Minister when Sonia appeared not to fully back him on the Indo-US nuclear deal.

But his first resignation threat came as early as 1971 when Minister LN Mishra got angry with Singh, who was Economic Adviser in the Commerce Ministry, after the latter found fault with a Cabinet note.

Singh said he would return to Delhi School of Economics but PM Indira Gandhi’s Secretary PN Haksar offered him Chief Economic Adviser’s job in the Finance Ministry. His daughter Daman Singh writes in ‘Strictly Personal: Manmohan and Gursharan’ that Singh recalls it as the first time he threatened to quit.

When he was RBI Governor during Indira's 1980 government, Singh once again raised a rebellion when then Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee wanted to approve the proposal to upgrade London-based Bank of Credit and Commercial International's representative office to a full-fledged branch. He had managed to nix the proposal when Charan Singh was Finance Minister.

As Mukherjee, who would two decades later work under Singh, pushed it, Singh sought a meeting with Indira and offered to resign. Indira heard him out and the proposal was binned, with Singh taking back his resignation.

It was in the mid-1980s that Rajiv told reporters that he had a “bunch of jokers” in the Planning Commission where Singh was Deputy Chairman under the Prime Minister. Rajiv felt they were not fast enough to catch up with modern developments and his ideas but the members felt he was speeding.

After a meeting on the 7th Five Year Plan, the Planning Commission was asked to rework the proposals, but Singh told Rajiv in a subsequent deliberations that negative economic indicators in the country could not be ignored before going ahead with grand plans, which made the Prime Minister make some derogatory remarks against the presentation.

Later, Rajiv made the infamous “bunch of jokers” comment and the then Planning Commission Member Secretary CG Somaiah recalled in his memoirs 'The Honest Always Stand Alone' that Singh was terribly hurt and wanted to resign.

“I sat with him for nearly an hour and told him not to take the extreme step and blamed the Prime Minister’s ignorance for this behaviour…I was finally able to convince him not to act hastily and that was my good deed for the day,” he wrote.

Next time, he submitted his resignation as Finance Minister after the Harshad Mehta scam but as Singh himself recalled in 2016, that Rao kept the letter with him and responded a week later with a “very nice letter” saying “you have to go back to your job and finish the unfinished task”. When there was pressure on him to roll back fertiliser prices, he once again offered to resign but Rao looked the other way.

Sonia faced resignation threats three times from Singh – in 2005 when the Left tried to block the India-US military exercise and twice on nuclear deal.

In 2007 when the nuclear deal went into cold storage and Sonia appeared to align with the Left’s position telling a media summit that the Left parties were “not unreasonable” and would work for a “consensus” at a media summit, Singh felt time was up.

At the same summit, Singh said if the nuclear deal was not done, it was not the end of the world but to a question on whether he would resign, he enigmatically said, “it is a suggestion for action.”

Sonia was worried as Singh signalled that options were open and she immediately engaged then Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Alhuwalia to broker peace.

The third week of June 2008 gave further jitters to Sonia as Singh conveyed to her on June 17 that he would quit as the Left was insisting on seeing the draft agreement worked out with the IAEA first. Singh was not willing to concede though such an arrangement was worked out with the Left.

In her book ‘How Prime Ministers Decide’, Neerja Chowdhury writes that Singh would have calculated that Sonia would be averse to elevating Pranab Mukherjee as Prime Minister. It was a message to Sonia from Singh that either she can have him as Prime Minister or she can look for another one.

“In the end, Manmohan Singh played his cards right Sonia Gandhi chose not to jettison him. And the PM got his lifeline,” Chowdhury wrote. The government did not show the draft with the Left and in a month’s time, the Left walked out of the UPA.

(Updated on December 29, 2024 at 11.30 am)