India's New P.M. Is Economist

Manmohan Singh, the architect of India's economic reforms and a respected political consensus builder, was named prime minister of India on Wednesday, ending weeks of political turmoil that culminated with Sonia Gandhi's refusal to take the post.

Singh and Congress party leader Gandhi met with President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam at his palace Wednesday night, where he approved their bid to form a minority government, with Singh at the helm.

Gandhi stunned the nation on Tuesday by declining the job after leading her party to a surprising victory over now ousted Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's National Democratic Alliance.

The meeting with the president took place after Gandhi ignored pleas from senior Congress officials and protests from thousands of disappointed supporters to change her mind and take the job herself.

"I am happy to inform the nation the president has invited me to form the next government," Singh told reporters after emerging from the ornate, colonial-era palace. Gandhi was by his side and they appeared at ease, laughing when reporters shouted questions at them.

A senior Congress leader said Singh would be sworn in Thursday or Saturday. Friday, he said, was an auspicious date on the Hindu calendar. It is also the 13th anniversary of the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, who was killed by Sri Lanka separatists, leaving Sonia Gandhi a widow.

Singh, the first Sikh to lead the government since its independence from Britain in 1947, is a veteran of Indian politics. The Oxford-educated former finance minister during the last time Congress was in power, from 1991 to 1996, scripted the nation's free-market reforms. His admirers credit him with helping to save the country's socialist-style economy from near collapse at the time.

Earlier, thousands protested and one mob stormed the headquarters of the Congress party demanding that Gandhi change her mind. Resignations also flew within senior ranks of the divided party.

"I am not going anywhere. I am still very much in politics," Gandhi said after disgruntled senior party leaders begged her to reconsider. She said she would remain the party leader.

"We live in times when politics is about power. Let us show the world that for the Congress party, politics is about values and integrity."

Congress has been thrown into turmoil, days after it had basked in the glory of last week's shock election victory, when it trounced the National Democratic Alliance of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

On Wednesday, Congress workers nationwide held sit-ins, marched in the streets, and burned tires to block traffic. Others lit effigies of the outgoing government's Hindu nationalist leaders, who had denounced the prospect of a foreign-born woman running the world's largest democracy.

The biggest protest was in New Delhi.

Party workers besieged Congress' headquarters, next to Gandhi's house, breaking doors and windows and demanding that she change her mind. By Wednesday afternoon, a crowd of more than 2,000 had gathered outside.

"It's Sonia Gandhi or nobody," some shouted.

The mob disrupted a press conference by disgruntled members of the Congress Working Committee, the party's highest policy-making body, who said they had collectively resigned to force Gandhi to change her mind.

Many of Gandhi's supporters are from the rural poor, left behind by India's economic boom.

"We feel very let down. All the work I did in the past two months has been wasted," said Abdul Ghani Khan, a Congress leader in the northern state of Jammu-Kashmir. He was among dozens shouting, "Sonia take back your decision."

Gandhi had plans to leave town on Friday, the 13th anniversary of the assassination of her husband, former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, according to local media.

Rajiv Gandhi was killed by a suicide bomber in 1991 and his mother, Indira Gandhi, was shot to death by her own bodyguards in 1984. Both served as prime minister.

If Sonia had become the next leader, she would have been the fourth member of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty to be prime minister. But senior allies said her children, Rahul and Priyanka, did not want her to take the post, fearing for their mother's life.