NEW DELHI. Dec 31: India's once powerful Congress Party, trailing in polls, is considering elevating a champion of economic reforms to lead it in the upcoming parliamentary elections. news reports said Wednesday, reports AP.

On Monday. Sonia Gandhi, the 51-year-old widow of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, announced that she would campaign for Congress, but she turned down offers to lead the party. The Business Standard newspaper quoted Gandhi loyalists as saying that she wanted the party to go into elections with a fresh, clean image and that she preferred Manmohan Singh to the party president.

As party leader. Singh would be In line to take over as prime minister should his party win the vote. As finance minister in the early 1990s under former Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao. Singh began opening Indian markets to foreign Investment and decreasing the government s role In the economy.

No election date has been set. but the vote must be held before March 15. the deadline for Parliament to approve the next annual budget. The early vote — being held less than two years after the last elections — was

called after Congress withdrew support from a minority government led by the United Front coalition.

Singh dismissed newspaper reports as hypothetical but he didn't appear to be averse to succeeding 83-year-old Sitaram Kesri as the Congress Party president.

"There are many senior leaders. However. If any responsibility is given to me by the party working committee. I will discharge it to the best of my ability." The Pioneer newspaper quoted him as saying.

Kesri was elected top party leader for a five-year term earlier this year, but has little charisma and some younger party members accuse him of strategic blunders.

Kesri "has nothing to offer which could fortify party workers for the election trail." The Times of India said in an editorial.

An opinion poll published Wednesday said campaigning by Sonia Gandhi — the party’s living link to former prime ministers Rajiv Gandhi, his mother Indira Gandhi and grandfather Jawharlal Mehru — would help Congress win an extra 20-25 seats In the 545-member lower house of parliament. The party won 138 seats

in its worst-ever election rout last year, and needs 273 to form a government on its own.

The poll, carried out by the Centre for Media Studies across eight states, did not include a margin of error. Earlier polls have predicted the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party will win the most seats, but probably not enough to form a government without partners.

Harihar Swarup. a political commentator, said Sonia Gandhi’s intervention had already been productive.

"The announcement of her decision to campaign for the party has stopped the exodus of Congress leaders to other political parties." he said in an interview.

In recent weeks, several top Congress leaders have quit the party in at least six states, accusing party chief Kesri of ineffective leadership.

"Three months hence. Ms Gandhi will either become the prime minister of the country or she will become a myth which has had its day." Pran Chopra, a political columnist, said in an interview.

Ms Gandhi’s husband was assassinated while campaigning for re-election in southern India in 1991.