A few months before stepping down from the post of Prime Minister in 2014, Manmohan Singh had said that his leadership was not weak and that history would be much kinder to him than what was published by the media at that time.
Manmohan Singh, while addressing a press conference in Delhi in January 2014, said, “I do not believe that I have been a weak Prime Minister… I honestly believe that history will be less favorable to me than the contemporary media or the opposition in Parliament.” Would be more merciful than… I have tried my best amidst political compulsions.
Manmohan had said in his last press conference, “…I have done as much as I could under the circumstances…It is for history to decide what I have done or not.” ,
Manmohan had said this while answering the questions in which it was said that his leadership was weak and he was not decisive on many occasions. In this press conference, Singh had made a scathing attack on the then Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi and also mentioned the Gujarat riots that took place in 2002 during Modi’s tenure as Chief Minister. At that time, BJP had projected Modi as a strong leader, while targeting Singh on the issue of weak leadership ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.
