I take my opponents very seriously: PM

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said Friday the party cannot underestimate the power of the opposition and that there was no room for complacency.

"As an organised political party, we cannot underestimate the power of the opposition to unsettle the ship of the state," he said during an interactive session at the HT Leadership Summit while replying to a question on the challenge posed by the BJP's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi.

"Therefore, I am one of those who take our opponents very seriously. There is no room for complacency," he said.

Congress leaders have spoken with great divergence of the challenge posed by Modi.

Finance Minister P. Chidambaramon last month conceded that Modi was a "challenger" to the Congress, while noting that the Gujarat chief minister was "opaque" on major issues.

A day later Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde had said that Modi posed no challenge to the Congress.

Most exit polls have predicted that the Bharatiya Janata Party would emerge victorious in the assembly polls in Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. The results of these elections will be announced Sunday.

However, the prime minister sought to delink the results of assembly polls from Lok Sabha polls, to be held in six months' time.

He said the Congress was approaching the 2014 general elections with a spirit of self-confidence, and that should not be mistaken, whatever may be the outcome of the just-concluded assembly elections.

Indo-Asian News Service

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