Mum on Pawar,Deshmukh reiterates Singh a strong Prime Minister

After calling Manmohan Singh a strong leader recently,former chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh continued batting for Singh for his second term as Prime Minister at a rally in the Camp Education society on Saturday. He was campaigning for the Pune Lok Sabha candidate Suresh Kalmadi. While reacting to Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) general secretary and chief spokesperson DP Tripathi’s comment on Sharad Pawar making a better Prime Minister than Manmohan Singh,he said that Manmohan Singh’s five year term has proved his acumen. “Manmohansinghji’s work in the past five years have been well acclaimed and we do not need any special certificate on the same,” he said. He,however,declined to comment on whether Pawar had the capacity to become the Prime Minister.

For a query on why local leaders,including MLC Mohan Joshi,were not seen campaigning for Kalmadi,Deshmukh said that Joshi and other leaders were campaigning in Mumbai.When asked about his take on Congress going alone in the election without NCP alliance,he said that the party was contesting elections with NCP as alliance partner now and they followed the party high command. In his speech earlier Deshmukh said that BJP was deceiving people on Ram temple issue.