Book ‘The Accidental Prime Minister’ called ‘third-rate’ by former national security adviser M.K. Narayanan

Former national security adviser M.K. Narayanan made no bones of his utter contempt for the book The Accidental Prime Minister:The Making and Unmaking of Manmohan Singh by Sanjaya Baru, it was reported by The Telegraph.

Narayanan dismissed the book as ‘third-rate’ and ‘full of lies’, while responding to Bharat Chamber of Commerce president Sitaram Sharma’s question on it and its author.

In the headlines for the movie released on it last week, the book was published in 2014 ‘purely to make money’, pointed out the former Governor of West Bengal at the event in Kolkata on Tuesday. The author was also described to be a ‘turncoat’ by Narayanan at the same event, it was reported.

Narayanan added that in his role as media adviser to the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh under UPA-I between 2004 to 2008, Baru was a ‘nobody’ who ‘ran away’ in 2008 when he felt that UPA would not return to power. Spanning almost the same period of time between 2005 and 2010, M.K. Narayanan was the national security adviser in the two UPA regimes under Singh. Contacted by The Telegraph for a response, Baru said that the book answers all the questions.

Saving the highest praise for the former Prime Minister, Narayanan said that the Indo-US nuclear deal saw the light of day only due to the ‘respect’ Singh commanded “from all quarters”.

As the former Governor of West Bengal, Narayanan also heaped praise on Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and Mamata Banerjee as chief ministers he worked with from Raj Bhavan in Kolkata. He said chief minister Mamata Banerjee was “a difficult person with some remarkable qualities”.