No shadow PM for Cong

CHENNAI, January 9: The Congress will not project a prime ministerial candidate for the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections and it was for the n...

CHENNAI, January 9: The Congress will not project a prime ministerial candidate for the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections and it was for the new members of Parliament to elect the leader of the Congress Parliamentary Party, All India Congress Committee AICC convenor Ghulam Nabi Azad said on Thursday.

Speaking to media persons on returning from Sriperumbudur, where he oversaw preparations for the launch of Sonia Gandhi8217;s election campaign slated for January 11, Azad held that the Congress had never projected a prime ministerial candidate. Even in 1996 when Narasimha Rao was the sitting PM, the Congress had not declared at any public meeting that Rao was the prime ministerial candidate.

The Congress had quot;the leadersquot; he said and added that the BJP, by projecting Atal Behari Vajpayee as the PM candidate, was depriving its elected representatives of the opportunity to chose their leader.

The main election plank of the Congress would be stability, Azad said pointing out that time and again it had been proved that the Congress alone was capable of running a government. In the 50 years since Independence, Congress had ruled the country for 44 years and six months when there were five PMs, two of whom met unnatural deaths. In the remaining six years, when non-Congress parties had formed the government, there had been seven PMs.

When pointed out that it was the Congress that had pulled down the government twice in the last 18 months, Azad said that but for the Congress no party would have been able to form the government. quot;It is unfortunate that the media overlooks this fact.quot;

He dubbed the BJP8217;s claim of providing a stable government as the best joke of 1997. The party which could not last in power for more than 13 days was now becoming more like the United Front with ten constituents, he said. Vajpayee8217;s statement that the constituent parties would also be part of the government was yet another similarity.

Charging the BJP of being quot;consistently inconsistentquot;, Azad said the party which professed to be against criminalisation of politics had provided ministership to criminals in Uttar Pradesh. Similarly, even while talking about corruption, it had allied with the most corrupt party in Tamil Nadu.

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Asked if Sonia Gandhi and Congress president Sitaram Kesri would campaign jointly, Azad wondered why the media did not ask if L K Advani and Vajpayee of the BJP would campaign together.

quot;As convenor, I think it is foolish to put the Congress president and the main campaigner together and leave two-thirds of the constituencies uncovered.quot;

Sonia had agreed to campaign for the party heeding to requests from Kesri and the party workers. Congress was a united party and it would form a government on its own, he declared.

He parried questions on whether Sonia would have a say in the matter of selection of candidates. quot;That is an internal matter of the party,quot; he said.

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Sriperumbudur had been chosen for the launch of Sonia8217;s campaign as that was the place where Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated while campaigning for the party. quot;She will complete the unfinished task of Rajiv Gandhi. She will pick up threads from Sriperumbudur,quot; he said.

When his attention was drawn to Finance Minister P Chidambaram8217;s statement that Sonia would not hit out against the TMC, Azad said that the party was quot;not interested in hitting out or kicking anybodyquot;. Sonia would ask the voters to strengthen the Congress.