Live: Will this be the Prime Minister’s last press conference?

9:30 am: Twitter abuzz ahead of Manmohan Singh's press conference

With the hype around this press conference, we turned to Twitter to see the reactions to the Prime Minister's press conference.

There's already a Twitter handle called @AskPMOIndia where you can send your questions for the PM but its not very clear how it will be asked of him.

Here are some of the reactions of some prominent Twiterati to the impending event:

Am all eyes...will wait for lips to move as Manmohan Singh addresses the Press...historic day for him...he's found his voice if not his mojo

— SUHEL SETH (@suhelseth) January 3, 2014

 

"@IndiaToday: Manmohan Singh to face media today, his 3rd media interaction in 9.5 years as PM" stressful day. like 3rd attempt JEE.

— Chetan Bhagat (@chetan_bhagat) January 3, 2014

Good morning! Friday blockbusters - The Wolf of Wall Street, Sholay in 3D, Manmohan Singh unmuted. Have a nice day

— palki sharma (@palkisu) January 3, 2014

7:30 am: Manmohan Singh to address first press conference of 2014

If there's one thing that the nation knows about Prime Minister Manmohan Singh it is that he is a man of few words. Most loquacious when flying back into India when he's returning from a foreign trip, Singh keeps his interactions with the press to a bare minimum and with the public restricted to televised speeches (and not all of those have gone smoothly either).

The numbers bear testimony to this. This press conference will be only the second during Singh's second term as Prime Minister. It will be only his third full-fledged press conference in the entire 10 years that he has been the Prime Minister.

So when coming to the end of a ten year term, possibly his last stint in national politics, Singh's announcement that he would be addressing a press conference just three days into the new year has expectedly been met with a lot of speculation.

Can he salvage anything with this press conference? PTI

Will he resign? No, said his office. Will Rahul Gandhi be made the Prime Minister to get a few months in the chair to motivate him for the national elections and get him some responsibility to show off? Unlikely, and it would be a really bad gamble.

So what do we expect? Singh is likely to focus on how the government, despite the claims of the opposition, met economic challenges head on and managed to achieve a modicum of success. The Prime Minister in all likelihood will deny the claims of policy paralysis and will give us numbers to show otherwise. He could blame Europe for the nation's economic woes like he has been for the past few months and could also face some questions on the Congress showing in the recent Assembly elections.

He will endorse Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and the philosophy of the Congress. In all likelihood he will have something to say about everything BJP's Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi has been saying, and about the BJP that has blocked Parliamentary proceedings and stalled crucial legislation. It's unlikely to be complimentary but then Singh is not a man of harsh words.

There won't be anything groundbreaking and if anything may be a defence that has come too late. But it will be good to hear the Prime Minister at least take some of these inconvenient questions for a change, rather than staying away from them.