In memoir, Sonia Gandhi recalls UPA power dynamics with Manmohan, Pranab’s 2010 PM post hint

Congress Parliamentary Party (CPP) chairperson Sonia Gandhi Gandhi has revealed in her memoir that there was always a clear division of power during the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) era, and that former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh ran the government while she ran the party.

Denying that government files were ever shown to her - an allegation made in previous books - Gandhi, in ‘Belonging: A Journey of Love’ , says she gave her inputs on government formation so that those who had served the party for years when they were out of power were taken care of. But she says that the allegations that she sent for files from the PMO were "malicious and totally false".

She also reveals that she - along with her children Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra - had decided months before the 2004 general elections result that she would never become PM, something her children insisted on because of safety concerns.

Singh was chosen because his image as the man who liberalised the economy in 1991 would offset those who had concerns about the Left supporting the UPA government from the outside.