leaving behind a mixed legacy of achievements and failures during his 10-year tenure, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Saturday demitted office stating that he did his best to serve the country and that his tenure was an “open book”.
Singh bid adieu as Prime Minister through a televised address where he said the judgement delivered by the people in the elections should be respected by all and wished the incoming Government every success.
The 81-year-old economist, credited with playing a key role in ushering in economic reforms in the 1990s, also chose the occasion to refer to his humble origin as “an underprivileged child of Partition” who rose to the highest office of the nation.
“This great land of ours where I, an underprivileged child of the Partition, was empowered enough to rise and occupy high office. It is both a debt that I will never be able to repay and a decoration that I will always wear with pride...As I leave office, my abiding memory will be the love and kindness that I have always received from you,” Singh, also having the credit of being the first Sikh and a minority as PM, said.
He drove to the Rasthrapati Bhavan from his official residence to submit the resignation of his Council of Ministers to President Pranab Mukherjee. Mukherjee accepted the resignation and requested him and his colleagues to continue till the new Government is formed. Earlier in the morning, the Union Cabinet met and recommended dissolution of the lok Sabha. The Cabinet adopted a resolution lauding the role of Singh.
“Fellow citizens, each one of us should respect the judgement that you have delivered. The just concluded elections have deepened the foundations of our democratic polity,” Singh said who achieved the distinction of serving as Prime Minister for the longest consecutive tenure after Jawaharlal Nehru’s 17 years in office. Singh was the surprise choice for the top post when his name was suddenly proposed by Congress president Sonia in 2004 when the party-led UPA coalition was in a position to form Government.
The perceived dual power centre in the Congress in the form of power vesting with party chief Sonia Gandhi also came to haunt him with critics attacking him as the weakest Prime Minister the country has had. Books by his former media adviser Sanjaya Baru and some other bureaucrats have only helped to highlight such a charge. However, Singh has maintained that history will be kinder to him than the current assessments.
Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kamal Nath later in the day said the process to form the next lok Sabha will commence after the Election Commission sends the notification of the newly-elected members. “Once the President receives the list from the Election Commission, the President will take an appropriate decision,” he said.
The outgoing term of the House was the most disrupted and wasted in Independent India, with pepper spray incident in the last session marking a new low in parliamentary conduct. Disruptions have been the order of the day and two years back an entire session was washed out after Opposition BJP insisted on its demand for Joint Parliamentary Committee probe into the 2G spectrum scam. This was unprecedented.
There was also uproar galore on the demand for the resignation of Prime Minister in the coal block allocation scam, the Commonwealth Games and Adarsh Housing scam, storm over Telangana when as many as 16 members from Seemandhra region were suspended ahead of the passage of Telangana Bill.
While it has the credentials of witnessing three women at top posts — Sonia Gandhi as head of the ruling dispensation, Meira Kumar as Speaker and Sushma Swaraj as leader of the Opposition, the lok Sabha also saw immediate disqualification of RJD chief lalu Prasad and JD(U) MP Jagdish Sharma after their conviction in the fodder scam.
The House also created history by landmark laws like Food Security Bill, land Acquisition bill and the lokpal Bill, however, Women's Reservation Bill, could not pass muster of the House despite being through the Rajya Sabha by the use of marshals.