Singh will be at Red Fort next year too, says Sonia

Congress President Sonia Gandhi today virtually declared Prime Minister Manmohan Singh the Congress’s candidate for next Prime Minister.

This was evident at the Congress headquarters when reporters asked the prime minister if he visualised himself hoisting the flag at the Red Fort next year. “Hopefully,” he said.

Sonia Gandhi, flanking him, however, added emphatically and with a wide smile, “Certainly, I am saying, certainly.”

At a time when the Congress has been agonising over whether to project a candidate for prime minister or go through the electoral exercise and select a prime minister as was done after the last general election when Gandhi renounced her claim to the seat, it seems the matter is settled.

Gandhi’s statement is an assertion on the record for the benefit of the likes of Human Resources Development Minister Arjun Singh who have said that in their view, Rahul Gandhi is “not too young” to take up the responsibility of becoming PM. It is also a signal to others in the Congress who consider the PM “apolitical”. At the same time, Gandhi is letting the party know who really calls the shots in the Congress.

It is also a signal to other allies including Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar that the Nehru- Gandhi family is not going to call in what is considered its automatic claim to the top job in the country should the party have the numbers to form a government.

The allies view the prime minister with indulgent tolerance and the slightest indication that he may have slipped from favour in the Congress President’s eyes would have caused a new round of politics altogether, even leading to the formation of new alliances.

What remains to be seen now is the kind of billing the prime minister gets in relation to other members of the Nehru-Gandhi family in the party’s campaign, both in terms of slogans and posters as well as pictures, billboards and cut-outs as the party starts mulling its campaign ahead of impending general elections.