No issue if Congress doesn't get PM's post: Azad

In a significant remark ahead of results of the Lok Sabha elections, senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad on Thursday said his party will not make it an issue "if the Prime Minister's chair was not offered to it".

"We are not going to make it an issue that we will not let any other leader to become the PM if the post is not offered to us (Congress)," he told reporters in Shimla.

"The party will not stand on prestige if a coalition government is formed at the Centre with parties that are anti-BJP and the Congress will be a part of it," he said, adding that his party wanted to oust the "anti-people, anti-farmer, anti-labourer and anti-economy" BJP regime.

Azad, the Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, said neither the BJP nor the NDA would come to power at the Centre.

Taking a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he said: "Modi is the first PM in the world to have spent 60 per cent of his five years in foreign trips... 90 per cent of the BJP campaign was led by Modi."

In his earlier remarks, Azad did not talk of a Congress-led UPA government but a non-NDA government, indicating that the Congress will reach out to every party outside the National Democratic Alliance's fold to form a government.

He said that the party will go by the "common decision" of all such parties and will take initiative for leadership only if there is consensus.

"It is not an issue that if we are not there, there will be nobody," he had said.

Congress President Rahul Gandhi has also scrupulously avoided the issue of leadership of a possible post-poll coalition, saying a decision will be taken after the results are out.

--IANS

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