If there was one official function that Congress president Sonia Gandhi really felt left out from, then this was it the little private ceremony conferring the Bharat Ratna on Atal Bihari Vajpayee at his residence. She made up for her absence by writing a letter to the former PM. Government managers were at pains to explain that they had nothing to do with it and that it was after all a Rashtrapati Bhavan function.
Since it was at the ailing former PM’s residence, only 50 guests were allowed. The managers reasoned that the government guest list was limited to eight cabinet ministers Rajnath Singh, Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley, Manohar Parrikar, Nitin Gadkari, Suresh Prabhu, and Venkiah Naidu besides BJP veterans L K Advani and M M Joshi.
Vajpayee’s family managed to invite his two of his close colleagues Yashwant Sinha and Arun Shourie. Standing out in this group of select invitees was RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, (Vajpayee is the first pracharak to be declared a Bharat Ratna). And this meant Sonia Gandhi simply could not be accommodated on the list.
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