New Delhi, Dec. 11: Sharad Pawar has suddenly gone soft on Sonia Gandhi, and tongues in Parliament’s central hall and text messages on cellphones are wondering why.

In an interview today to BBC’s Hindi service, Pawar said: “One has to admire her (Sonia’s) contribution to the Congress party. One has to also respect her for her courage. Her husband was assassinated. So was her mother-in-law Indira Gandhi.”

The explanations for the turnaround range from the mundane one of wanting an alliance to wrest the Bombay Municipal Corporation from the BJP-Shiv Sena to the dream of a Congress-NCP rapprochement.

But in the Congress, sceptics said Pawar had typically used a red herring to lull the party into the belief that the alliance will stay “even as he tries to undercut our base all the time”.

As a Congress leader from Maharashtra remarked: “When it’s Pawar, anything is possible and plausible.”

In the interview, Pawar also referred to Sonia’s “foreign origin”, which he had raked up in a CWC meeting back in 1999.

“But clearly we felt that in a vast country like India… maybe she was not the right person to lead the Congress party and the country.”

Today, Pawar apparently viewed Sonia through a different prism. “But today when I see her, I appreciate that she spends a lot of time to understand the problems of the country and its people. And the results are for everyone to see. Her work is benefiting her party.”

Asked what Sonia was like as a person, he said: “The Gandhi family has a tradition of being good hosts... Sonia Gandhi is continuing with that tradition.”

The interview touched on his reported aspirations to become Prime Minister by asking why no Marathi had ever made it.

“Our problem is we never got our strategy right. We concentrated too much on being the king-maker rather than becoming the king ourselves.”

He indicated his turn may, perhaps, not come. “Now I am only concentrating on grooming the next generation.”