President skips legal consultations as UPA emerges on top

NEW DELHI: Her job having become easy with Congress-led UPA close to securing majority in Lok Sabha, President Pratibha Patil today limited her exercise of consulting legal experts.

Though she was initially planning to hold larger consultations with legal experts in the course of the next couple of days to decide which party or alliance to invite, Patil restricted her consultations and spoke only to former Attorney General Ashok Desai.

The meeting lasted for nearly an hour during which the President and Desai discussed the poll outcome, a Rashtrapati Bhavan official said.

The day began for the President with some internal meetings after which she was glued to the television, watching the trends and results as they unfolded.

Since the UPA has left its principal opposition NDA way behind, an invitation to the Congress-led alliance to form the government is inevitable.

Congress President Sonia Gandhi has said that Manmohan Singh will be the Prime Minister now and he is all set to become the first person after Jawaharlal Nehru to return to power after a full five-year term.