Cong supporter files petition to stop publication of Natwar's book

Congress supporter and Supreme Court advocate Asad Alvi has filed a petition in a district court in New Delhi to stop the publication of Natwar Singh’s autobiography, One Life is Not Enough, on the grounds of the “indecent, derogatory statements against Mrs Sonia Gandhi in his book.”

Singh, in his book, had claimed that Congress president Sonia Gandhi had access to key government files and that her decision to not accept the prime minister’s post was influenced by her son Rahul Gandhi, who feared she might be assassinated like his father Rajiv Gandhi and grandmother Indira Gandhi were.

According to a Hindustan Times report , Alvi asked the court to prevent Singh and his publisher, Rupa Publications India, from publishing the book. The petition filed by Singh said that the book described Sonia Gandhi as a ‘prima donna’, which could mean a spoilt brat apart from a lead dancer. It also said that the word ‘Machiavellian’ used for Sonia meant “insidious, conniving, two-faced.”

Singh has made a number of allegations against Sonia Gandhi, who expelled him from the party after he was implicated in the oil for food scam. He has said that she never heeded an ‘inner voice’ when refusing the PM’s post in 2004, and was instead influenced by Rahul, who was afraid for her life. He also said that she was ‘hostile’ towards P.V. Narasimha Rao although she made him Prime Minister after Rajiv Gandhi died.

Meanwhile, Unfazed by the attacks on him by the Congress leadership, and possibly buoyed by all the publicity his book has received, Singh has also decided to write a sequel “which will have many more disclosures”.

To be called ‘My irregular diary’, the sequel is expected to hit the market by next March, the former External Affairs Minister told PTI.

The former Congress veteran is elated at the response his book ‘One Life is Not Enough’ has received in the four days of hitting the market. “It has sold 50,000 copies already and the publishers are going for reprints,” he said about the autobiography which has created a political storm.

Asked if he had deleted anything from the book after Sonia and Priyanka Gandhi had met him at his residence in May ahead of its publication, Singh replied, “not a word.”

(With inputs from IANS)