Sonia Gandhi to Host Dinner for Manmohan Singh

The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Chairman and Congress president Sonia Gandhi will host a farewell dinner for the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on 14 May.

Singh, 81, who held the position for 10-years, bid adieu to his staff at his South Block office on Tuesday and thanked them.

In his remarks at the farewell function, Singh addressed 110 members of his personal staff and 400 members of other peripheral staff. He told them, "You served the nation well. God bless you." During the day, the Prime Minister chaired a meeting of the Union Cabinet and cleared a few economic proposals and posted the new army chief Lieutenant General Dalbir Singh Suhag. Manmohan Singh will demit the PMO on Saturday.

Leaders of BJP, the main Opposition party, including LK Advani and Arun Jaitley have termed Singh as the weakest Prime Minister and said that the actual power was vested in the hands of Sonia. Jaitley has, in his blog, praised Singh as a very good Finance Minister of the country during late PV Narasimha Rao's regime, but dismissed him as an able PM. However, the All India Congress Committee (AICC) maintained that there were no differences between the Prime Minister and the party president.

Media reports said that Singh will be presented a memento at the farewell dinner by Sonia Gandhi, the Union Cabinet ministers and Congress Working Committee (CWC) members.

The Prime Minister is expected to hold his last cabinet meeting on Saturday and then meet President Pranab Mukherjee. Singh will address the nation on the same day. The Prime Minister will also host a high tea to his minister colleagues, followed by a dinner to be hosted by the President.

Singh is the only Prime Minister of India who held the position for second term after the country's first PM Jawaharlal Nehru.

Singh was born in Gah, now in Pakistan's Punjab, and his family migrated to India after partition in 1947. Singh is a holder of doctorate in economics from Oxford University.

Before becoming the Finance Minister in Narasimha Rao's Cabinet in 1991, Singh has served as the Governor of Reserve Bank of India between 1982 and 1985 and head of Planning Commission between 1985 and 1987.