Summary: Sonia Gandhi turned against PV Narasimha Rao during his tenure as Prime Minister and kept that hostility after his death. Rao's body was kept waiting outside 24, Akbar Road for half an hour and was not allowed into the AICC headquarters, so his family finally took it to Hyderabad for cremation. In this article, the author attributes Rao's selection in 1991 to Sonia Gandhi's need for a pliable leader for a minority government, but notes that Rao did not prove the submissive loyalist she had hoped for. She would later get exactly the rubber-stamp PM she wanted in Manmohan Singh.
Why it matters: The piece critiques Congress’s internal politics, which revolve around the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. Independent, visionary leaders like Narasimha Rao, Lal Bahadur Shastri and K Kamaraj have been few and far between, and the party’s proclivity for servility has worsened ever since Rajiv Gandhi’s Italian widow, Sonia Gandhi, took charge.
“Opinion | PV Narasimha Rao, Sonia Gandhi & PM Modi: A Political Irony” — News18, 25 Oct 2026
Prime Minister Narendra Modi honoured PV Narasimha Rao with Bharat Ratna posthumously in 2024; while then Congress President, Sonia Gandhi, had refused permission to open the gates of her party headquarters for Rao’s mortal remains 20 years earlier.
It is no secret that then Congress supremo Sonia Gandhi had, from a particular time onwards, begun to despise PV Narasimha Rao during his Prime Ministerial tenure, and she carried that feeling of revulsion even after his death.
It was an extreme situation when Rao’s body was kept waiting outside 24, Akbar Road, for half an hour. It was made clear that the gates of his parent party will not be opened at all. Rao’s body was not to be brought inside the AICC for paying any respects. His family was persuaded to take his body to Hyderabad for cremation…
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