New Delhi: If Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had quit last year when Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi publicly trashed the ordinance to save convicted legislators from disqualification, the UPA government would have "collapsed", said the prime minister's former media advisor Sanjaya Baru Thursday.
Baru, whose book "The Accidental Prime Minister - The Making and Unmaking of Manmohan Singh" has become a bestseller, also said that the Rahul Gandhi incident in September last year "did not come on its own", adding that "there was talk in the air on the need for change".
Baru had at the time come on television to say that the prime minister should quit in the wake of the "insulting" remarks by Gandhi and that he must apologise to the prime minister.
According to Baru, at that time "a lot of people were lobbying for change (in leadership) and seeking change". The prime minister was "aware of the developments", he said.
During the time an "expert" who was close to Gandhi had written a paper for the United Progressive Alliance saying that "Rahul Gandhi should take over and Manmohan Singh should go", Baru said at the event organised by Penguin Books India.
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