Singh was in Mumbai on a day's visit to meet various Muslim organisations and community leaders in his capacity as the AICC minority cell chief. However, he spoke very little about his agenda and chose to counter Pawar during a news conference hosted by Murli Deora, MRCC chief. ``The country needs to know what happened between May 6 and 15 since Pawar had on his own declared that Sonia Gandhi is the party leader and would be projected as theprime ministerial candidate on May 6 in New Delhi,'' he said.

Referring to the charge of his being in Sonia Gandhi's coterie, Singh said that the term `coterie' was ``a convenient one'' used by people when their viewpoint was not accepted by the party. ``The implication is that Sonia Gandhi can't function on her own, which is unfair and untrue. She never had a coterie, she does not have one and she will never have one,'' he said, before refuting the charge that he had misled her on the Congress claiming support of 272 MPs after the fall of the Vajpayee Government.

Singh denied that Gandhi had ever made a claim; ``It was a statement of fact'', he argued. ``Pawar was not marginalised in the party, he was in fact made the party leader in the Lok Sabha by Sonia Gandhi... after the dissolution of the Lok Sabha, he took on the responsibility of working out an arrangement with Mulayam Singh, the nation knows what happened but I don't know who was responsible for that not working out.'' Many in the CWC, Singhsaid, believed that Pawar and P A Sangma had given a clean chit to Vajpayee while criticising the Government, which was the wrong thing to do.

Asked about the Maharashtra asmita not being respected in New Delhi, Singh retorted that Pawar's charge was wrong. On the contrary, he had backstabbed his mentor Y B Chavan and later Vasantdada Patil, both of whom were Marathas. ``He is using it as a political thing; it's wrong,'' Singh added.

Singh explained that he was not fighting the forthcoming Lok Sabha election because he wanted to ``do his bit for the party'' instead of concentrating on winning his own seat. The election will be ``an epic battle'', he said.He said the Prime Minister should answer only one question about the current Kargil conflict; this won't affect the morale of our forces but we need to know on what date the PM came to know of the intrusion in Kargil. ``The answer to this one question will throw light on many aspects of the issue,'' he said.