•n You are one of the particularly fortunate CMs for two reasons. One, you lead one of the very few governments which are entirely dependent on the Congress’s own MLAs. They don’t have any coalition partners to worry about and second, you ran this campaign and won and you built it over many years.

The first part is right. We have 190 MLAs. We don’t need to depend on anyone else. Out of 294, if we have got 191 MLAs, we have more than two-thirds MLAs. But the other part, running the campaign and all that, yes I did my best, but it was the Congress party’s campaign along with all of us in the state and, of course, our leader Sonia Gandhi.

•n So, you can’t take the credit yourself.

Although I’m sure many of your colleagues will give it to you.

No, that’s not right. No one in the Congress party can say that it is all because of me. The Congress party’s approach is different, the party’s culture is different, the heritage is different. We believe in working together, taking the credit or even the discredit together.

•n A very different thing about you and your political career is that in a party which is sometimes run by very senior people, you became a party president at a very young age of 32.

I was 33. It was because of Rajiv Gandhi. Rajiv’s eyes fell upon me, he recognised me.

... contd.