Congress party has dismissed the perception that Sonia Gandhi had forced a reluctant Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to drop two Union ministers Ashwani Kumar and Pawan Kumar Bansal. The party said, it was a joint decision.The party came out with an unusual rebuttal of media reports which said Gandhi had prevailed over Singh.

In statement party General Secretsary Janardan Dwivedi today said, it has appeared in a section of the media that it was at the insistence of Congress President Sonia Gandhi that the two Ministers were dropped. This perception is not correct. The correct position is that it was the joint decision of the Congress President and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Railway Minister P K Bansal resigned on Friday following the arrest of his nephew Vijay Singla last week for allegedly accepting Rs 90 lakh for fixing promotion in Railway Board while Law Minister Ashwani Kumar quit in the wake of a raging controversy over his vetting the CBI probe report in the coal block allocations scam.