India´s Manmohan Singh defended his decade-long record on Saturday as he resigned as prime minister a day after Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi led his Bharatiya Janata Party to a historic election victory.
After making a final televised address to the nation in the morning, India´s third-longest serving PM was driven to the presidency building in central New Delhi, where he tendered his resignation to President Pranab Mukherjee.
“Today India is a far stronger country than it was a decade ago,””I give you credit for it. We still need to work hard to take this country forward.” he said in a short and typically low-key speech, wearing his trademark blue turban.
The economist also sent his best wishes to his successor Modi, a polarising Hindu nationalist in a forthright remarks.
“I am confident that India will emerge as a strong economy in the world, blending tradition with modernity and unity with diversity,” Singh added.
He will continue as a caretaker prime minister until 63-year-old Modi takes office some time next week.
“I owe everything to this country, this great land of ours where I, an underprivileged child of Partition, was empowered enough to rise and occupy high office,” he said in his address.”It is both a debt that I will never be able to repay and a decoration that I will always wear with pride.”
Figures from the Election Commission showed the BJP had secured 280 seats and was projected to win another two in the 543-member parliament, the first majority by a single party since 1984.
The Congress party, India´s national secular force that has ruled for all but 13 years since independence, was virtually obliterated, poised to win just 44 seats barely a quarter of its tally in 2009.
