Manmohan is intelligent man, quiet worker: Bal Thackeray

Replying to a question on who had been the best prime minister of India, Thackeray said in an interview to the party mouthpiece Dopaharka Saamna that Manmohan Singh "is an intelligent man, but he is very mild".

"However, we don't know if he has become mild owing to the pressures of working under Sonia Gandhi. But he works quietly," Thackeray said in praise of Manmohan Singh.

Referring to the late prime minister Indira Gandhi, he said she was a woman who "had guts".

"That is not merely because she was from the Gandhi family. But, when she won the Bangladesh war, even A.B. Vajpayee had hailed her as an avatar of Goddess Durga," said Thackeray.

Paying rich compliments to Indira Gandhi's governing ability, Thackeray said that "she had the capacity to rule, she actually ruled".

Admitting that he had differences of opinion with her, Thackeray mainly faulted her for the decision to impose Emergency in 1975.

He also unleashed a broadside against the Gandhi family and said Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi would marry a Christian girl just like his sister Priyanka.

“Ever since Sonia (Gandhi) has come, she has converted the Gandhi family into Christians!”