In an apparent dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi who is yet to hold a press conference, his predecessor and Congress veteran Manmohan Singh on Tuesday said as a Prime Minister, "he was never afraid of speaking to the press".
Speaking at the launch of his book "Changing India", the former Prime Minister also asserted that India was destined to become a major economic global power.
A set of five volumes, "Changing India" details his life as an economist as well as his 10-year period at the helm of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) regime.
"I was not the Prime Minister who was afraid of talking to the press. I met the press regularly, and on every foreign trip that I undertook, I had a press conference on return.
"There are large number of those press conferences which have been described in the book," he said at the event.
"People say I was a silent Prime Minister, but these volumes will speak for themselves. I don't want to boast about my achievements as a Prime Minister, but the events that took place are well described in these volumes," he said.
His remarks follow that of Congress President Rahul Gandhi ridiculing Modi for not holding a press conference ever since becoming the Prime Minister in 2014.
Talking about future of the country, Manmohan Singh said despite all the hiccups, India was destined to become a major global powerhouse.
"The emergence of India as a major global power is one such idea whose time has come and no power on earth can stop such an idea," said Singh quoting Victor Hugo, whom he had quoted as the then Finance Minister during his historic 1991 budget speech.