Mani shankar aiyar biography of donald

In an interview with PTI Videos on his forthcoming book “A Maverick in Politics” published by Juggernaut, Aiyar said he “has had it all” but, at the end of the day, he was “completely isolated in the party”. However, he maintained that he was still a member of the party and asserted, “I’ll never shift, and I will certainly not go to the BJP”.

Asked about the patronage from the Gandhis, Aiyar said, “If you want to be successful in politics as an individual, you have to have a very strong base. Either you have a constituency where you’re not defeated or you’re undefeatable, or you have a caste base or you have a religious base. I had none of these.”

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“I only had patronage. I had the favour of (former) prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. I then had the favour of Sonia Gandhi. But that’s a very, very uncertain basis on which to be in politics. So when Sonia Gandhi got angry with me in 2010, that patronage got withdrawn. And yet not completely withdrawn,” he said.

Aiyar added that on a personal level, she continued to have some affection for him.

“So it was a very slow decline. But it was a decline that took place over a period of about 15 years… And then, once Rahul Gandhi came in, I thought it was going to go up. Because he said to me that where he used to agree with me 75 per cent, he said ‘now I agree with you 100 per cent’,” the former Union minister told PTI.

“And then proved that he agreed with me 100 per cent by asking his mother to remove me from the only position I had in the Congress, which was as the national convenor of the party’s Panchayati Raj Sangathan, named after Rajiv Gandhi. And then refuse

New Delhi, Nov 6 (IANS): Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar is not happy with Donald Trump's victory in the US Presidential elections. Talking to IANS here on Wednesday, Aiyar said: "I am deeply disappointed that such a person, who has been labelled a felon by American courts and whose history includes visits to prostitutes and paying them to silence them, has been chosen as the world's most powerful president."

He further remarked: "It is truly disheartening to see such a despicable man elected. I also regret that Kamala Harris, who might have won, would have been the first woman and the first politician with ties to India to become President.

"Personally, I believe Donald Trump is not a good man. It’s a separate matter if you ask what impact this will have on our politics, but when you look at his character, there is no doubt in my mind that the wrong person has been elected. This is my personal opinion."

On the question of potential passage of the One Nation, One Election (ONOE) Bill and the Waqf Bill in the upcoming winter session of Parliament this month, Mani Shankar Aiyar said: "I'm not closely following these matters because I am not in Parliament, and my party has sidelined me. I don't have much interest in the details, but in principle, it would be wrong to tell Muslims that we will change this or that without their consent, because that would not be in their best interest."

"As for what I read in the newspapers, Jagdambika Pal, who was once in Congress, has now become the chairman of a committee, but it seems he is not managing the committee properly. There have been complaints from many opposition leaders, and they’ve met with Om Birla ji to address the issue. Let's see what Birla ji does in this regard."

Aiyar further said: "I believe this idea (ONOE) is completely nonsense. Our country's unity is built on its diversity. The RSS and the Sangh Parivar, who are connected with it, always try to reduce diversity and create a si

In this last volume of his autobiographical trilogy, the author gives us a candid account of the various stages of his political life. Some of the events described are no longer of much public interest and the reader’s attention may flag while negotiating the exhaustive narration. Nevertheless, many of Aiyar’s experiences, as an ordinary MP and as a minister, are worthy of documentation.

As a “Constituency MP”, he worked zealously to promote the well being of the people but not always with matching electoral success. He was more than compensated for this by a compliment from Sukh Ram, one of India’s most electorally successful politicians: “Winning an election is easy but gaining the affection of the people is difficult. You have won their affection.”

As a “National MP”, while he was able to do useful work on some issues of national importance, his desperate efforts as a deeply committed secularist to prevent the demolition of the Babri Masjid failed. To his amazement, Prime Minister Narasimha Rao sought to correct his definition of secularism by declaring, “You don’t understand that this is a Hindu country”. When the historic mosque came down with the PM missing in action, Aiyar made this scathing, though not necessarily fair, remark: “Narasimha Rao has proved that death is not a necessary precondition for rigor mortis to set in”.

Many years passed and the Congress returned to power in 2004 with Manmohan Singh as PM. In the next few years, Mani was entrusted with four ministerial assignments: Petroleum and Natural Gas (2004-2006), Panchayati Raj (2004-2009), Youth Affairs and Sports, and Dev