Manmohan's brush with differently-abled

Differently-abled athlete Malathy Holla, who released her biography last week, has this incident to relate about Prime Minister Manmohan Singh when he was finance minister. Holla had sought excise exemption to buy a car for herself and for the differently-abled. When she displayed her 150 certificates, Singh first asked her, “How can I believe that these are yours?”. Holla is the winner of Arjuna and Padma Shri awards. Infuriated, Holla, now 51, shot back: “How can I believe, sir, that you are Manmohan Singh?” Singh was taken aback. “What do you mean?”, he asked.

“Sir, just to cheat you, I needn’t have travelled for over 46 hours with all my problems. I could have sent you the certificates by post. If you wanted to, you could have verified with the sports department at Shastri Bhavan,” Holla said. Singh apologised and told her she would get the exemption before she reached Bangalore. “When I reached Bangalore, the relevant letter was indeed on my table,” said the biography.