Stalin says Rahul will be PM after LS polls

Sticking to his Rahul Gandhi for prime minister pitch, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam President M K Stalin on Wednesday said the Congress chief will assume the top office within a few weeks.

Sharing the stage with Gandhi at a grand United Progressive Alliance poll rally in Nagercoil, Stalin declared that the coming Lok Sabha election was a war to dislodge Prime Minister Narenda Modi and asserted the UPA would repeat its 2004 success by winning all 40 seats.

"Within a few weeks, Rahul Gandhi will become the prime minister. In your (Gandhi's) hands the country will be safe we believe," he said.

Stalin had proposed Gandhi as the prime ministerial candidate of the opposition alliance at a function in Chennai in December last year where Karunanidhi's statue was unveiled.

However, the proposal had drawn lukewarm response from several other opposition leaders who were not keen on naming prime ministerial candidate before the polls itself.

The DMK leader said he had made the pitch for Gandhi as PM following in the footsteps of his father late M Karunanidhi who had fully supported the Congress chief's grandmother Indira Gandhi's return as Prime Minister in the 1980.

"Power is going to come to you soon, it will be for the poor, it should be for the common man and we are fully confident, we are supporting you because you are Rahul Gandhi and not Narendra Modi," Stalin said.

Claiming that the country had not flourished in the National Democratic Alliance rule, he sarcastically said it was not so about the prime minister who wore fancy designer wear every day.

Youngsters believed that Modi's rule would bring employment, but nothing had been done. On the blackmoney front too, nothing has been done, he alleged.

While the government promised corruption free government, the Rafale deal exposed it, he claimed.