When Sonia kept Najma Heptulla waiting for an hour when she called from Berlin

PTI New Delhi: After being elected president of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) in 1999, Najma Heptulla rang up the then Congress chief Sonia Gandhi from Berlin to convey the news but had to hold the phone line for an hour as a staff told her that “Madam is busy”. The former deputy chairperson of Rajya Sabha, who had left the Congress after reported differences with Gandhi and joined the BJP in 2004, mentions this incident in her just-released autobiography “In Pursuit of Democracy: Beyond Party Lines”.

Heptulla says the IPU presidency was a “historic first and a great honour, marking the pinnacle of my journey from the Indian parliament to the world parliamentary stage”. First, she telephoned Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee from Berlin and he received her call instantly. “When he heard the news, he was delighted, first because the honour had come to India, and second, it had come to an Indian Muslim woman. He said, ‘You come back and we will celebrate.’ I could also connect to the vice-presidential office instantly,” she writes. However, when she “rang up Sonia Gandhi, Congress Party President and my leader, one of her staff first said, ‘Madam is busy.’ When I pointed out that I was calling from Berlin, an international call, he just said, ‘Please hold the line.’ I waited for one full hour.

Sonia never came on the line to speak to me”. Heptulla says she was truly disappointed. “After that call, I did not tell her anything. Before forwarding my name for the post of IPU President, I had taken her permission, and at the time, she had given her blessings,” the former governor of Manipur writes.

“If every country, culture and family has its special moments - events so important, and somehow so personal, that they transcend the normal flow of daily life - this was one such moment for me - a moment in time of such importance that it drilled a sense of rejection in my psyche forever. “It was, however, a rejection that proved prescient. It prophesied a time of transition, a downward spiral that left its experienced members, party, demoralized,” he said.