Karan Thapar 
Mani Shankar Aiyar, a former Congress cabinet minister who is renowned for his loyalty to the Gandhi family, says that in 2012 Dr. Manmohan Singh should have been elevated to the presidency and Pranab Mukherjee should have been made prime minister.
He says if that had happened Congress would not have sunk to just 44 seats in 2014 but might have ended up with around 140. Aiyar also says that he intensely dislikes Narendra Modi but calls Atal Bihari Vajpayee “a good man”.
In a lengthy interview to discuss the second volume of his autobiography A Maverick in Politics, Aiyar also revealed that his own suspension from the party happened without Sonia Gandhi being aware of it.