NEW DELHI: A day after the New Indian Express expose on how, Congress President as the capacity of Chairman of the National Advisory Committee used to summon bureaucrats and sought compliance reports from Manmohan Singh’s government, Congress on Monday came out in defence saying that Sonia Gandhi as chairperson of the Council was “super Prime Minister” during the UPA regime.
Reacting on government’s proposal to make 710 NAC files public, Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said that the files being in question were at a time when Gandhi was not the Chairperson of the Council. He said Gandhi had not been with the NAC from March 2006 to June 2010 when it was reconstituted.
He insisted that, at the same time, the NAC mechanism had helped the cause of the oppressed and the depressed and had been instrumental in bringing forward several path-breaking legislations like RTI, Right for Food, Right to Forest Produce and Right to Education.
Surjewala said the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh gave the suggestions of the NAC legal shape through his “visionary thinking”. The question was put to Manmohan Singh during the Punjab Congress manifesto release function, but Surjewala chose to answer it.
Express had reported that Prime Minister Narendra Modi led government is mulling over to make public 710 files related to the NAC that gave an insight of the relationship with the Council headed by Sonia Gandhi.