Cong doesn’t want PM post, will back regional leader: Azad

“My party high command has already made it clear that the Congress is not averse to making a Prime Minister from any regional party,” Azad told reporters here. He was asked if the Congress will be ready to support any regional party leader for the PM’s post even if it emerges as the largest party in a hung Parliament. Speaking in the same vein in Patna on Wednesday, Azad had said the Congress will not make it an issue if the PM’s post is not offered to it. “Our focus since the start has been very clear,” Azad, the leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, told reporters in Patna on Wednesday.

“If a consensus is made in the favour of Congress, then the party will take the leadership but our aim has always been that NDA government should not come. We will go with the unanimous decision. We do not want to create any issue at this time that if we don’t become, no one else should.”

Azad’s remarks assume significance as the Congress has been asserting that it would be the fulcrum of any non-NDA government, which was seen as its claim for thePM’s post and had led some major regional parties to maintain a distance from it. The Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha had saidthe sole objective of the Congress is to stop the NDA from forming the government at the Centre and installing a non-NDA government.