Rahul (top), Arjun

Bhopal, March 30: Arjun Singh finds it fitting that a young India should have a youthful Prime Minister — Rahul Gandhi.

“Why not? He is young. This is the age of youth. More than 60 per cent of the country’s population consists of (people) below 40 years of age,” the Union human resource development minister said at a news conference when asked if Rahul could be a Prime Minister candidate.

Pressed if he could be named the Congress nominee for the post when he was still “discovering India”, Arjun said such standards could not be there in a democratic polity.

Although he refrained from specifying that the AICC general secretary should be projected as the Prime Minister candidate for the next general elections, Arjun is the first senior minister in Manmohan Singh’s cabinet to raise the issue of Rahul donning the mantle.

The minister’s remarks assume significance in the context of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) insisting that Manmohan be projected as the Prime Minister candidate in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls.

The NCP, a partner in the UPA coalition, had termed Manmohan the most democratic face of the alliance at its recently concluded national executive.

However, some state-level Congress leaders endorsed Arjun’s preference for Rahul, portraying him as the Congress’s Dhoni — India’s wicket keeper-captain who led the country to the ICC World Twenty20 victory.

Another section of leaders said the sensitive topic of leadership could work negatively for Rahul at this juncture when elections were more than a year away.

A senior leader said that at the national level, too, the Congress was grappling with how to respond to questions about the status of the incumbent Prime Minister.

Arjun was more cautious when asked about the fee hike in the Indian Institutes of Management. “Look at the fabulous packages that the on-campus placements are offering,” he said.