I am not an idiot. I understand that anyone who is a cabinet minister makes ample money. I know how it is. Pramod (Mahajan) used to come to me and once I asked him: “You send so many of your MPs and ministers abroad to learn... but what do they learn? Nothing. And they say they don’t earn anything, either.” Pramod told me: “It’s all a blatant lie.”

• Particularly, your power minister — who had access to so much.

So much. I mean, how can you say you cannot. Even the organisation has its own needs. The problem comes when you earn and do not give a farthing to the organisation.

• So you’re saying that you suspected Prabhu was earning for himself but not passing anything to the party?

I don’t want to say anything now or make any allegations. That chapter was closed a long, long time back.

• No, we need to know why you removed him. People in Delhi thought he was a good minister.

We had our own reasons. What’s over is over.

• But Pramod told you that if any minister says that he is not making any money, he is lying.

Yes, he told me.

• And it irritated you that, ‘my ministers are making money and they are not giving to the party’?

They must have made money. My ministers were not fools.

• Suresh Prabhu wasn’t. He was one of the brightest people I met in that cabinet.

... contd.