MUMBAI: Indira Gandhi, Prime Minister of India, was called VANO; a senior Union minister codenamed ABAD was a KGB agent; Congress heavyweight Lalit Narain Mishra was regularly given cash in suitcases for the party; the KGB had no less than 10 Indian newspapers on its payroll.

Sensational revelations all, they have set off a political storm ever since the story broke over the weekend. These allegations are contained in The Mitrokhin Archive II — the KGB and the World, a just released book based on material provided by Vasili Mitrokhin, a Soviet defector to the UK.

The extracts give an idea of the KGB’s game plan: discredit Mrs Gandhi’s political enemies and influence Indian politics and public opinion to turn leftwards. For this, the KGB funded the Communists and encouraged them to support Mrs Gandhi’s socialistic policies, including bank nationalisation.

Predictably, the allegations have set off a war of words between the Congress and the BJP. The former attacked the book as a plot of “the Western media and authors to malign Third World leaders”. Mrs Gandhi’s secretary RK Dhawan has pointed out some inaccuracies in the book; he says Mishra was never the treasurer of the party and those days money came in “bundles, not suitcases”.

“There is a bunch of political mercenaries in the West who are available for money. There is not a shred of evidence to substantiate their allegations,” Congress spokesperson Jayanti Natarajan said. But the Congress will not seek a ban on the book, she added.

But BJP general secretary Arun Jaitley said the Congress and the CPI owe an explanation to the country and demanded a high-level inquiry into the allegations.