By IANS,
New Delhi : Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi Sunday said that his party’s prime ministerial candidate Manmohan Singh and its commitment to the India-US nuclear deal were not negotiable.
“From my side, I know – and I do know my mother’s views on this – that he is the best prime ministerial candidate,” the 38-year-old told CNN-IBN in an interview here.
Gandhi’s comments come a day after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said that he was ready to hand over the party’s leadership to young people and that Rahul, son of Congress president Sonia Gandhi, was an ideal candidate.
Rahul Gandhi said: “He (Manmohan Singh) is our candidate and we are going to stick by him. Like we did in the case of the nuclear deal.”
He said he was concerned over the election results but insisted that there “are some issues in which there can be no compromise”.
He added: “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.
“But I am very clear that we need to take a longer-term perspective,” he added.