"Rajiv has a job but Sanjay doesn’t and is also involved in an expensive venture,” then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi wrote in February 1971 about her sons to her principal secretary Parmeshwar Narayan (P. N.) Haksar. She was referring to her younger son’s involvement with the people’s car project that evolved subsequently into Maruti Suzuki. The boys’ father was a Parsi, Feroze Gandhi of Allahabad.
From l: Indira, Sanjay and Varun Gandhi
"He (Sanjay) is much like I was at his age — rough edges and all — that my heart aches for the suffering he may have to bear,” she noted. This was quoted by Haksar’s biographer, Congressman Jairam Ramesh in Intertwined lives: P. N. Haksar and Indira Gandhi. Reviewing the book in The Indian Express (IE) on June 23, 2018, Congressman Mani Shankar Iyer pointed out that the secretary "tried to warn (Indira) of the danger to her and her country of letting motherhood undermine her role as India’s leading political personality.”
Bharatiya Janata Party member of parliament Varun Gandhi was quick to defend the image of his father Sanjay. When Ramesh dubbed Sanjay’s Maruti a failed car at a public lecture in Poona, Varun referred to Ramesh as "an accidental politician writing about a failed bureaucrat.” He went on to describe Maruti as India’s largest industrial success, post-Independence.
"Sanjay’s Maruti company was liquidated in 1977 and a commission of enquiry was held to look into the manner in which the company flouted rules and failed to produce a roadworthy indigenous car,” wrote senior columnist Coomi Kapoor in IE on June 24. "After Sanjay’s death, Indira Gandhi... salvaged Maruti Ltd and the company entered into a partnership with Suzuki of Japan,” she noted. Kapoor stated that "Varun’s point is that the land, infrastructure, name and concept of a people’s car were thanks to his father, even if the end product was different.” Sanjay’s statue stands in the Maruti factory "in gratitude,” in North India she noted.