Prime minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi appear to be on a collision path on the issue of "subsidies," a group of Congress MPs learnt to their anguish at the first in the series of the special interactions organised by the party from Tuesday to know the thinking in the government.

Much to their chagrin, they heard planning commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia telling them to mobilise members in parliament to quickly put an end to the subsidies or face the country's ruin as experienced by some western economies like Italy.

Ahluwalia, known to speak on behalf of Manmohan Singh, wanted the Congress MPs to understand the impending economic crisis at a time when the US senate is trying to cut down the budgetary deficit, India is mindlessly heading for more and more deficit by burdening the exchequer with ever-increasing subsidies.

Though the invite was sent out to all 275 Congress MPs and the party office bearers to attend the interaction organised by the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation close to parliament House, hardly 15 Congress MPs and 4-5 party office bearers turned up. Congress general secretary Janardan Dwivedi, who had sent out the invite, was missing.

The party felt the need of such interactions after its MPs complained that they are at sea on the issues picked up by the opposition as they are never taken into confidence on the government and party position to be effective in countering it. The party leadership felt perturbed to find not many taking interest when the interactions were being organised on the party MPs' demand.

Those who turned up wanting to know all about the "coalgate" and other scams brought out by the CAG that were the hot topics and came out upset that they were rather subjected to a lecture by Ahluwalia that tried to show as if the government were not happy with the welfare programmes pursued by Sonia Gandhi.

They wanted to hear from Ahluwalia solution to the immediate problems, but he was focused on the long-range effect of the wrong economic policies, particularly those frittering away the government funds.

Ahluwalia pressed for the rollback of all subsidies on diesel and cooking gas and went on to point out how the economy will collapse if the government has to take the burden of providing food subsidy to 60 percent population in the name of the food security.

Some of the MPs and the party office bearers like AICC secretary Sudhakar Reddy could not resist from telling him in the question-answer session that he was prescribing a recipe for the Congress rout in the next elections.

The interaction was strictly off-media, a closed-door interaction and yet Ahluwalia made it a point to ensure nobody from the media persons were present and pleaded with the participants to keep what all discussed completely off the media to avoid unnecessary controversies.

He was, however, asked about some of the controversies created by him itself like one on the poverty line and why he insists that not more than 35 percent people are in the poverty bracket. The participants were rather upset at his plea that the government will be burdened heavily with the welfare measures if their number is raised to 60 or 70 percent.

The participants felt a person like Ahluwalia at the helm of affairs in the planning commission may be putting brakes to the pro-people measures going by his presentation and wondered if the prime minister wants to convey through him the hard economic decisions he has been talking but not able to take.