Rahul Gandhi with sister Priyanka at Veer Bhoomi on the death anniversary of their father Rajiv Gandhi. (Rajesh Kumar)

Lucknow, May 21: Senior Congress leader Arjun Singh today said former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was such a great man that he had even tried to “integrate” his mother’s “killers” into the mainstream.

The comment, which has the potential of threatening the human resource development minister’s position in the party and the government, came at a programme here to commemorate the late leader’s 17th death anniversary.

“Rajiv Gandhi itne mahan vyakti the ki unhone apni ma ke hatyaron ko bhi rashtra ki mukhya dhaara mein shamil karne ka prayas kiya (Rajiv Gandhi was such a great man that he even tried to bring the killers of his mother into the mainstream,” he said at the event organised by Other Backward Class leaders in the Uttar Pradesh Congress.

“Only a person who is completely committed to the country can do this.”

In Delhi, Congress circles said the remarks were aimed at a senior leader who had recently contested Arjun’s claim that he had reservations on imposing the Emergency back in 1975.

The politician Arjun has consciously avoided naming had figured in the report of the Thakkar Commission that had probed Indira Gandhi’s assassination.

The commission had pointed a “needle of suspicion” at the politician, who spent over three years in the wilderness.

But in February 1989, in the period after the Bofors scandal broke, Rajiv brought him in as officer on special duty in the Prime Minister’s Office.

Thakkar, in his 312-page final report to the government on February 27, 1986, recommended that the central government “seriously consider the question of appropriate agencies to investigate the matter as regards the involvement of” the leader in the crime.

Arjun Singh at the event in Lucknow on Wednesday. (PTI)

The report was tabled in Parliament on March 27, 1989, after it had been “leaked” to the press. Rajiv and his party, however, decided to relegate the report to the archives.

Sources said Arjun’s comment was sure to trigger another round of controversy after the minister had ruffled feathers with his recent remarks on the lack of democracy in the present-day Congress.

In an interview, he had alleged that the party now took important decisions without consulting senior leaders.

The day after the comment became public, Arjun shot his mouth off again. He said the party now rewarded not genuine loyalty but the pretence of it and praised Indira Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi for their open-mindedness, saying they had tolerated his refusal to endorse Emergency but spoke not a word about Rajiv and Sonia Gandhi.

Today, however, Arjun heaped praise on his party chief, Sonia.

After the death of a person like Rajiv, he said, “it is natural” that the country would feel a vacuum. “But we are fortunate that this vacuum has been filled by Soniaji and (her son) Rahul.”

Arjun said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Sonia had fulfilled all the promises made in the party’s 2004 election manifesto. “The biggest achievement was to give reservation to backwards without affecting others,” he said on the eve of the fourth anniversary of the UPA government at the Centre.