India PM to step aside after this year's elections

New Delhi

INDIAN Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has signalled that younger party leader Rahul Gandhi should replace him, saying he'll step aside after elections due by May, ending a decade in power with Asia's third-biggest economy in a slump.

"I will hand the baton over to a new prime minister," Mr Singh, 81, told reporters in New Delhi yesterday. Mr Gandhi has "outstanding credentials", he said, adding that top opposition candidate Narendra Modi "would be disastrous for the country" and that he had presided over a "mass massacre" of citizens in his state of Gujarat.