NEW DELHI: If Jawaharlal Nehru's views as quoted by a former Congress MP from Gujarat are true, not only Congress President Sonia Gandhi but even Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi are not qualified to head the Government.

Dinesh Trivedi, a leader from Kutch but now spokesman of the Trinamul Congress of Mamta Bannerjee in Calcutta, has cited the instance when Nehru as well as then President Babu Rajendra Prasad and Home Minister Sardar Patel refused to entertain then Indore Maharaja Yashwantrao Holkar's desire to make Richard, son from his American wife, his successor.

Participating in the debate on foreign origin in Calcutta daily "The Telegraph", Trivedi says all three made it clear that the son of a foreign wife could not inherit the Indore gaddi and what followed was unprecedented. "Contrary to all Hindu traditions, precedent and religious sanctions, the maharaja's daughter, Usha Raje Holkar, born of a Hindu wife, was made the successor to the ruler of Indore."

Trivedi says the rulership was only notional since by that time all states had merged into the Union and yet Nehru did not allow even the notional rulership to a foreigner's progeny.

Not stopping just at that, Trivedi cites yet another instance dating back to 324/23 BC when Chandragupta Maurya deeated Alexender the Great's nominee Selucas and how the shrewd Chankya later performed the mariage of Chandragupta with defeated Selucas' daughter Helen just to keep the Greeks out of India.

Trivedi claims Chanakya, however, made one important condition: No progeny of Helen would either succeed or claim the inheritance of the throne of Magadh. END.