Ms Gandhi, an Italian native, said she did not say who she would nominate for the post, but the favorite appeared to be Manmohan Singh, the architect of India’s economic liberalisation program during the last Congress-led government from 1991 to 1996.
The new Congress lawmakers shouted and pleaded with her to change her mind, and she had to stop several times to get the audience to quiet down.
According to Jyoti Basu, a senior Communist Party of India-Marxist leader and Congress party ally, Ms Gandhi’s children did not want her to take the post. “Rahul and Priyana said, ‘We have lost our father, we don’t want to lose our mother as well,” he said.
Ms Gandhi’s husband and mother-in-law were past prime ministers who were both assassinated. Rajiv Gandhi was killed by a suicide bomber in 1991 and Indira Gandhi was shot to death by her own bodyguards in 1984.
