Manmohan "best" PM candidate, issue not negotiable: Rahul

In a ringing endorsement, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said on Sunday that Manmohan Singh is the party's "best" prime ministerial candidate and made it clear this issue was non-negotiable and there can be no compromise.

Gandhi said both he as well as his mother and party president Sonia Gandhi will stick with Manmohan as the prime minister after the electiaons and that there was complete unanimity in the Congress over the choice of the 76-year-old leader just as in the case of the Indo-US civil nuclear deal.

"From my side, I know--and I do know my mother's views on this--that he is the best prime ministerial candidate. He is our candidate and we are going to stick by him like we did in the case of the (Indo-US) nuclear deal," the scion of the Nehru-Gandhi family told reporters in New Delhi.

Addressing a rally at Barmer in Rajasthan, Rahul also strongly batted for the prime minister saying, "Manmohan Singh is our PM, he is the UPA's PM."

The comments by the 38-year-old leader came a day after prime minister Manmohan Singh indicated his willingness to hand over power to a younger Congress leader.

"I have said Rahul Gandhi has all the qualities a good PM should have. I certainly at some stage would like the seat of power should be in the hands of younger people than I am," Singh told a TV channel on Saturday.

Rahul said he was concerned over the results of the Lok Sabha elections but stressed that there are "some issues in which there can be no compromise."

"Of course, it would matter to us. It matters to me as a general secretary of the Congress party," Gandhi said when asked by reporters whether it would  matter to him if Congress loses the elections since he is focussed on a long-term perspective.

"But I am very clear that we need to take a longer-term perspective. There are some issues in which there can be no compromise. For instance, we could have said forget the nuclear deal. But we did not take that approach. We persisted with it. Pretty much all of us knew that our Government could have fallen if we persisted with it," Rahul said in New Delhi."

Asked to comment on Left feeling a sense of betrayal by the Congress, Rahul said he did not think so.

"I don't think the Left feels a sense of betrayal. They have their point of view and we have ours. We are clear that we are not going to compromise on what we think is the right direction for the country and for the Congress," he added.

To a query about his assessment of how the Congress is going to perform with three of the five phases in the elections getting over, Rahul said, " We will improve our tally. We will win and form the government."

The 2004 elections hinged on two or three factors while the current election is more complicated, he said, adding that he knew the states where the Congress was gaining like in Kerala, Orissa, Punjab, West Bengal, Rajasthan,Chattisgarh.

Gandhi said irrespective of the performance of Congress at the elections his is a longer-term view.

A very issue that is not immediately visible is the issue of inclusion, he said, adding that in fact the country can grow faster only by taking everyone along.

"We simply don't beleive we can take this country forward without inclusion. What we are talking about is a core idea-- that everybody should be part of the game--The BJP believes that the poor, the Dalits and the minorites should not be part of the game," he added.

The other long-term objective is democratisation of politics. "We need to change this country fundamentally--from centralisation of political power to democratisation."