Indian PM defends record in parliament

NEW DELHI: India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday defended his record in office as his embattled government looked to revive its fortunes during a new parliamentary session.

Singh pointed to the country's rapid development in recent years as he tried to shrug off a series of corruption scandals that have undermined his personal reputation and led to damaging deadlock in parliament last year.

"The whole world has admired India's economic growth," he told lawmakers. "The government is committed to achieving a growth rate of nine to 10 percent this year."

He again vowed to tackle graft, which many Indians believe has increased as the economy has boomed.

"Nobody will escape the law," he said. "Action has been taken against the wrongdoers as and when there has been credible evidence. The government will do everything to clean public life of corruption."

A corruption scam in which the treasury lost up to $40 billion through the cut-price sale of mobile phones licences in 2008 has become a major challenge for Singh, but he said there was "nothing wrong in the telecom policy".

Inflation and the rising cost of food has been another key issue -- tens of thousands of people protested in New Delhi on Wednesday against surging prices.

Food inflation is running at over 11 percent, hitting India's poor -- key supporters of the ruling Congress party -- the hardest.

"The government's policy is to control inflation in a manner that does not hurt employment growth. We will expand frontiers of our ability to control inflation through the national food security bill," Singh said.

The prime minister repeated pleas for balanced coverage of his administration, saying the media had to give a fair account of the government's achievements.

"The message should not go out that India is adrift," he said.

Opposition protests over the telecoms scandal led to no legislation being passed in the last parliamentary session, though lawmakers have struck a deal to resume business for the current session with the budget due on Monday.