Chandigarh: Congress today (Mar 4, 2004) said if it failed to get the numbers and was forced to cobble a coalition, the alliance partners would jointly decide who should be the Prime Minister.

"Sonia Gandhi is our declared leader and will remain so and if the party gets majority on its own in the elections she will move ahead to become the Prime Minister," Congress spokesman Abhishek Manu Singhvi told reporters in Chandigarh.

He, however, said if Congress fails to get majority on its own and forms a coalition Government, the alliance partners would chose its leader.

"In the true spirit of coalition politics, the leader of the alliance will be decided by consensus among its partners," Singhvi said.

He accused the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of "deliberately raising" the leadership issue to hide its "shortcomings".

Taking a dig at Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani for his remarks at a rally in Haryana yesterday that parties outside National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and Congress-led alliance had lost their importance, he said it amounted to "sheer opportunism" on the part of the BJP. "Advani has no right to speak against regional parties as the BJP had used them for about five years."