NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has been in office but wielded feeble power, with little control over members of his cabinet, the power to make key appointments and with Congress President Sonia Gandhi deciding on files that bore his signature, according to a new book written by his former media advisor.In the book The Accidental Prime Minister — The Making and Unmaking of Manmohan Singh, Sanjaya Baru, who served as his media advisor between 2004 and 2008, painted a picture of an honest and hardworking man “defanged” by a party keen to lay all the government’s achievements at the door of its first family. The book, which hit stores on Friday bang in the middle of the election campaign in which the Congress party is projected by pollsters to fare poorly, said although Singh was the prime minister, Sonia Gandhi was the real boss and exerted an upper hand on the prime minister.Sonia dealt an upper hand through bureaucrat Pulok Chatterjee “who was appointed into the office at her behest”. Through Chatterjee, who is now the principal secretary to the prime minister and has been long considered close to the Gandhi family, the Congress president was privy to the files to be cleared by the PM, said Baru. He noted that Chatterjee “had regular, almost daily meetings with Sonia at which he was said to brief her on the key policy issues of the day and seek her instructions on the important files to be cleared by the PM”.Baru’s book is an unprecedented instance of a book on a serving prime minister by a close aide, and could provide ammunition to the critics of the PM and the Congress party. As Delhi was convulsed by its contents, the Prime Minister’s Office rubbished the book as “fiction”.“It is an attempt to misuse a privileged position and access to high office to gain credibility and to apparently exploit it for commercial gain,” said the PM’s present media advisor Pankaj Pachauri. Asked to respond to Pachauri’s comments, Baru, a former editor and now with the London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies (ISS), said: “I am amused”.“PM has told his close associates that he has been “back stabbed” by Baru. PM is very upset. Baru sent a copy of the book with a note saying that he was traumatised by the events of 2009 when he was not allowed to join the PMO again. So, many insiders feel that this book is the result of his disappointment in not getting his PMO job back. Everyone in the PMO is appalled by what has appeared in the book,” said a source close to the Prime Minister.Congress spokesperson Shakeel Ahmad said he had not read the book, but did not think the allegations reportedly contained in the book were correct. But the BJP was quick to seize on the book’s contents, which its spokesperson said showed that Singh was more a bureaucrat than a prime minister. “This just proves what we have been alleging all along that there is a twin power sharing system in this government where approvals were given by Sonia Gandhi.... There was no accountability for her actions. Our stand has been vindicated that decisions were taken by one person and executed by another. The person wielding authority was beyond the pale of questionability,” said BJP spokesperson Nirmala Sitharaman.In the book, Baru said that nobody in Singh’s first cabinet felt that they owed their position or portfolio to him, while Congress spokespersons spared no effort in projecting Sonia Gandhi as the boss. "Singh’s “Achilles’ heel was his equation with Sonia”, said Baru, adding that “he would always be tormented by the question of whether he was his own man or Sonia’s puppet”.After the UPA’s victory in 2009, Singh had assumed the victory would bolster his power, but “bit by bit, in a space of a few weeks, he was defanged”. While Singh thought he could induct the ministers he wanted into the cabinet, Baru said Sonia Gandhi “nipped that hope in the bud by offering finance portfolio to Pranab (Mukherjee).” Singh had wanted to appoint his principal economic adviser C Rangarajan to that post. The PM also “tried to put his foot down on the induction of A Raja” but after 24 hours “he caved in to pressure from his own party and the DMK”.Baru said Singh had told him that there cannot be two centres of power. “That creates confusion. I have to accept that the party president is the centre of power. The government is answerable to the party,” Singh was quoted as saying. The book says Singh had a difficult time making his cabinet ministers fall in line and paints a picture of the PM either ignored or undermined by Congress heavyweights at meetings. Singh’s only allies were leaders of UPA constituents such as Sharad Pawar and Lalu Yadav.The book says that at the peak of the political crisis over the Indo-US nuclear deal in the summer of 2008, Singh, who was finding it difficult to push the deal through his own party and faced resistance from the Left, had threatened to quit and had even told Congress President Sonia Gandhi to look for his replacement. About those days, Baru writes that on June 18, Sonia Gandhi and Pranab Mukherjee met with the PM. Later he told Baru that he had met with Gandhi the previous day and offered to resign. He said his position had become untenable.The reason: India was going to the international nuclear watchdog IAEA to negotiate a safeguards agreement, but the Left wanted a look at the draft and give their go-ahead. “This was impossible, said the PM,” writes Baru.PM told the Congress president that if the government agreed with the Left and stayed put, then they would have to look for another prime minister. Sonia asked Montek to persuade Singh not to resign, says Baru. Singh told Baru, according to the book, that Sonia was asking him “to wait and not force the pace of events”. Singh said, “I’m ready to go. Anyone of them can be made PM. Why not?” referring to AK Antony, Pranab Mukherhee and Arjun Singh.Finally, the government decided to go to IAEA. And Baru got a call from a friend of Amar Singh who was in a Colorado hospital. He left a message with Baru: “Maybe the prime minister would want to wish Amar Singh a speedy recovery.” The SP support was clinched and the PM stayed on to win a parliamentary vote of confidence after the Left had withdrawn support, making it the rare occasion he had stared back at his own party and the Left -- and won.