India’s PM to step aside after election
NEW DELHI — India’s prime minister announced Friday he would step aside after 10 years following this summer’s general election, saying Rahul Gandhi should replace him if the ruling Congress Party manages to stay in power.
In only his third news conference in a decade, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said that Gandhi — the 43-year-old heir to India’s Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty — has the best credentials to become the next head of the Congress Party and prime minister of the world’s biggest democracy.
Singh is 81 and was not expected to seek another term.
“I have ruled myself out as a prime ministerial candidate,” Singh said. “Rahul Gandhi has outstanding credentials. … I do hope the party will take the right decision at the appropriate time.”
Friday’s news conference came at a time when the Congress Party’s stock is low, battered by corruption scandals, internal feuding, and an inability to deal with a stumbling economy and deep-rooted problems with poverty, infrastructure and education.
The opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, led by Narendra Modi, has the momentum ahead of the May elections, after trouncing Congress in recent state polls. The vote was seen as a gauge of voter sentiment in the secular country of 1.2 billion.
Singh said it would be disastrous if Modi became prime minister.
Modi, chief minister of western Gujarat state for the past 11 years, is credited with turning his western state into an industrial haven. But critics question whether the Hindu nationalist chief can be a truly secular leader over India’s many cultures.
Modi has been accused of doing little to stop anti-Muslim riots in the state in 2002, which left more than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, dead.