Indian PM Singh to step down after 2014 elections

Google – AFP, Adam Plowright (AFP), 3 January 2014

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh looks on during a welcoming ceremony

for the Maldives president in New Delhi on January 2, 2014 (AFP, Raveendran)

New Delhi — India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced Friday that he will step down after elections this year, and said the next generation of the Gandhi dynasty should replace him if the ruling Congress party wins an unlikely third term.

Singh also mounted his strongest attack yet on opposition leader Narendra Modi, who has been making gains in the polls despite his links to deadly religious riots in western Gujarat state in 2002.

"In a few months' time after the general elections, I will hand over the baton to a new prime minister," Singh said at a rare press conference that confirmed his imminent retirement after more than nine years in power.

The 81-year-old had already hinted strongly at his intention to make way for leader-in-waiting Rahul Gandhi, the scion of the Gandhi family dynasty which has dominated India's government since independence.

Indian National Congress Vice President 

Rahul Gandhi addresses the Federation of

Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry 

(FICCI)'s 86th Annual General Meeting in

New Delhi on December 21, 2013 (AFP/

File, Prakash Singh)

Singh said that the Congress party would declare its prime ministerial candidate in due course, with commentators speculating that an announcement could come at a meeting on January 17.

"Rahul Gandhi has outstanding credentials. I hope our party will take that decision at an appropriate time," added the two-term prime minister, democratic India's third-longest leader.

Polls show Congress trailing badly ahead of the world's biggest election, due by May this year, with the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) under Modi's leadership gathering momentum.

"It would be disastrous for the country to have Narendra Modi as prime minister," Singh said.

Referring to Modi's reputation for decisive leadership, Singh said that political strength was not demonstrated "by presiding over the massacre of innocent citizens in Ahmedabad", the largest commercial city in Gujarat state.

As many as 2,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed during religious riots in 2002 in Gujarat shortly after Modi came to power as chief minister of the economically successful state.

The 64-year-old Modi, who rose through grassroots Hindu organisations, has long been accused of doing too little to stop the violence. Several investigations have cleared him of any personal involvement.

A woman who he later appointed as a state minister was sentenced to 28 years in jail in 2012 for instigating the carnage.

During his time as prime minister, Singh has seen his formerly stellar reputation based on his work as a reforming finance minister in the 1990s tarnished by a string of corruption scandals and slowing economic growth.

He mounted a defence of his legacy, regretting high inflation, the graft scandals and weak growth in manufacturing output, but hailing his government's work for the rural poor and farmers.

On average over the nine years of his two terms, economic growth was "the highest of any nine-year period" since India's independence in 1947.

Growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the last fiscal year was 5.0 percent, its lowest rate in a decade, but Singh insisted that the medium-term trend was healthy.

"It is not just the acceleration of growth that gives me satisfaction. Equally important is that we made the growth process more socially inclusive than it has ever been.

"In 2004, I committed our government to a new deal for rural India. I believe we have delivered on that promise," he said.

Rahul Gandhi, whose father, grandmother and great-grandfather were all prime ministers of India, has shunned several invitations to join the government and remains only intermittently in the spotlight.

The media-shy bachelor accepted the position of number two in the party in January last year -- second only to his mother Sonia -- raising hopes he would play a larger public role in setting policy and priorities.

His popularity among the electorate also remains in doubt, with Congress suffering a string of severe state election defeats in the final months of 2013 despite him being projected as the party's new face.

Indian police use water canon to disperse 

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) activists 

during a protest outside Congress Vice

 President Rahul Gandhi's residence in

 New Delhi on December 31, 2013 (AFP,

Sajjad Hussain)

The BJP said that Singh had ignored "the real issues affecting the common man", which it named as corruption, inflation that has often been in double figures, and dismal economic growth.

"His statement on Narendra Modi clearly reflects the party's depression over his popularity across India," vice-president of the party Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi told AFP.

Singh, widely portrayed as an aloof and ineffective leader who has often faced immense pressure to resign, batted away questions about his public image.

"I have always felt relieved that history will be kinder to me than the contemporary media or for that matter than the opposition parties in parliament," he said.

Asked for his best memory, he named striking a landmark atomic energy deal with the United States in 2005 that ended India's 30 years of isolation over its disputed nuclear programme.

On his future plans, he said: "I have still have five months to complete my present tenure and therefore when I reach that stage I will cross that bridge."