Prez Pranab plays it safe on Narendra Modi's PM remark

Onboard Air India One, March 7: President

on Tuesday refused to be drawn into a controversy over Gujarat Chief Minister

's comments that he would have been a better choice for prime minister than Manmohan Singh, saying they could make their "own assessment".

"You can have your own assessment," a smiling Mukherjee told reporters, accompanying him back from his three-day maiden foreign visit to Bangladesh, when asked about Modi's remark.

In the three-day BJP national executive council meet that ended in Delhi Sunday, Modi had said: "Had Pranab Mukherjee become the prime minister of this country, the situation would have been perhaps not so bad."

The President had decided to go ahead with the Bangladesh tour regardless of the serious turmoil which has currently engulfed that country.

IANS