A nationwide survey has indicated strong support for Sonia Gandhi as prime minister of India replacing incumbent Manmohan Singh, and terming her as the most popular leader in the country.
NEW DELHI: A nationwide survey has indicated strong support for Sonia Gandhi as prime minister of India replacing incumbent Manmohan Singh, and terming her as the most popular leader in the country.
The Centre for Study of Developing Societies conducted the Indian Express-CNN-IBN Survey in 18 states and 1,884 respondents were interviewed between July 16 and 19.
The analysis of survey results shows that 52 percent respondents wanted Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to be replaced by Sonia even as 56 percent respondents were satisfied with the PM's performance.
According to the survey's results, Sonia is the most popular leader in the country as 29 percent preferred her as PM over Bharatiya Janata Party leader Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who was voted as favourite by 21 percent.
In terms of popularity, Manmohan came a distant third with 16 percent votes while former deputy PM and senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader LK Advani could garner only two percent votes.
The survey indicated people consider United Progressive Alliance government has performed badly on certain fronts such as price rise, terrorism and farmers' suicides.
About 56 percent respondents expressed dissatisfaction over the UPA government's performance on the issue of price rise while only 22 percent were satisfied over its handling of crucial issues of terrorism and farmers' suicides.
The survey results indicated that people like his honesty and wisdom but they are not sure how strong he is as a leader. Only eight percent believed that the PM takes important decisions.
About 22 percent said Sonia is taking all big decisions while 22 percent said big or small it is Sonia who calls the shots in the government. About 47 percent were not sure who is taking major decisions in the government.
Interestingly, 36 percent of the respondents did not find anything wrong in this situation, whereas 18 percent felt the PM should take decisions on his own instead of looking for approval to Sonia Gandhi on every issue.
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