Manmohan to be PM candidate, indicates Sonia

Friday appeared to be declaring that Manmohan Singh would be the UPA's Prime Ministerial candidate in the next Lok Sabhaelections.

"Why not, certainly", she said when asked by reporters at the AICC headquarters whether Singh would unfurl the national flag next year from Red Fort. Lok Sabha elections arescheduled early next year.

"Hopefully," was Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who wasby her side, replied when he was put a similar question.

Gandhi and Singh were speaking to reporters soon after the Congress President hoisted the tricolour at the partyheadquarters at Akbar Road here.

The unfurling of the national flag on the Independence day today by the Prime Minister was the last in his tenure andfor the fifth year in a row.

Gandhi's brief response to the query was significant in view of the fact that the Congress has so far been ambivalent on the issue and has been maintaining that the matter will bedecided at the appropriate time when the election approaches.

Gandhi, who is the Chairperson of the UPA, her remarks have come at a time when political commentators are saying that Singh had come of age as a politician after he won the confidence vote in the Lok Sabha after staking stakinghis government on the Indo-US nuclear deal.

"There is no vacancy for the post of the Prime Minister. No applications are being invited or are necessary or are being entertained", Congress spokesman Abishek Singhvi had said recently indicating that Singh will in allprobability be the PM candidate in the elections.

The A.I.C.C. had some time back reacted unenthusiastically to when senior leaders like Arjun Singh and others who had sought to project Rahul Gandhi as the PMcandidate in the next elections.

Nationalist Congress Party (N.C.P.) chief Sharad Pawar had only last week openly endorsed Singh as the natural choice of the U.P.A. given the fact that his leadership has been non-controversial. PTI