I said, "I hope Fakhruddin has told you of my suggestion. Why don't we postpone this meeting ? Why can't we try to postpone the meeting?" She was rather temperamental. She said, "No. I don't want to take the responsibility of postponing the meeting. If you want to go and talk to the President you can. I am not." She said it rather sharply.
TVK : The previous meeting was also a short one.
YBC : I must say it appeared to me rather casual. She was tried. I do not put any interpretation. After a full day's work, may be she was tired. The important point was there was nothing to talk. I said, "How can I try?" Then she said, "No. I have got to ask you one thing. They are mentioning that you are also going to support Sanjiva Reddy, that there is some kind of commitment. They are counting you also as a supporter of Sanjiva Reddy."
I said, "In a way, yes. Commitment, yes, because when he came to me, he mentioned you are going to support him and so I said, yes." In a way there is a commitment.
Well, again there was an abrupt end of the interview. She sat quiet. I said to myself this was her notice that the interview was over. Suppose I came to meet you and immediately you sit down, I feel my work is over and I can go. When my work is over and somebody else is sitting there, it is better to leave them free.
After ten minutes we met at the meeting and the voting took place.
I have tried to give you the sequence of events. There is a lot of misunderstanding. There was nothing like political grouping. I had all the time thought of Sanjiva Reddy. If he were elected, he would have gone with flowers every morning to No.1 Safdarjung Road. That was my feeling. But she had another assessment.
TVK : Was the Syndicate - or the old group - planning to have Sanjiva Reddy to sort of restrain the PM ?
YBC : Nothing wrong with Sanjiva Reddy. This is what I felt.
TVK : That is the beginning of the split.
YBC : I thought she (the PM) was very angry after that selection. She was, I felt, very angry with me. There were rumours and reports that Chavan was going to be sacked.
TVK : There was a report that the PM was relieving Mr. Chavan but on the intervention of the Russians it was stopped.
YBC : If she wants to get rid of me, she gets rid of me. Ministership is not everything. One day she told the Press she was accepting the Parliamentary Board's decision. I thought this is all right. But suddenly Morarjibhai's letter came.
Even after that she agreed to file the nomination. We decided that Nijalingappa should come and address the party. In the meanwhile, Tarakeshwari (Sinha) wrote a very unfortunate article in the "Current" criticising the leadership of the Prime Minister. It came up in the party meeting and there was an uproar. In the party meeting they did not allow Nijalingappa to speak. Instead of categorically dissociating himself from the article, he said, "If somebody writes to me I will look into it." That gave the Prime Minister the feeling that they are ganging against her. I think that night or the next day, she decided to oppose Sanjiva Reddy's name.