Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar on Friday said he would not have been a Union minister if Congress president Sonia Gandhi had been the prime minister.
"The question does not arise," was his reply to a query whether he would have joined the government if Gandhi had headed it. Asked if his party would have supported the government from outside, Pawar said, "Yes. But I would not have become a minister because I had taken a public stand (against a person of foreign origin becoming prime minister)."
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"In fact, my stand was not wrong because she has herself decided not to be prime minister," he added.
Pawar said Gandhi's refusal to take up the post was an acceptance of his party's reservations on the foreign origin issue. "We had parted ways with the party (Congress) on the issue. When the time came, Sonia declared that she would not accept the responsibility and passed it to Manmohan Singh. This shows that they accepted what we were demanding," the NCP chief said.
