Observing that there should be a 'limit' to contesting elections, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee on Thursday said that he was not inclined to enter the fray this time but agreed to fight keeping with the wishes of the Bharatiya Janata Party and its supporting partners.
"This time I was not inclined to fight the elections and I told my friends about it," he said, while addressing party workers soon after filing his nomination papers for contesting Lok Sabha polls from Lucknow constituency.
"There should be a limit to fighting elections. This time, my friends and our allies did not agree to it. I am a party worker and I have to abide by the wishes of the party," he said.
The prime minister said he disliked questions shot at him like why he was not retiring. "I came to politics with a great mission to serve the nation."
He said democracy was not about one individual or party and in India it reflected the wishes and aspirations of over 100 crore people.
The country's democratic system has seen many elections and at times it appeared that democracy would be turned into authoritarianism, but the people did not allow it, he said.
"We will ensure that democracy is preserved at all cost," he added.
Vajpayee also sought a fresh five-year mandate to complete the 'unfulfilled' tasks.
"Give me five more years so that we can complete all the unfinished tasks. We will try to remove the deficiencies," he said.
The country had made a lot of progress on the economic front, he said.
A stable government at the Centre alone would ensure faster progress of the country, Vajpayee said.
He suggested that close coordination was also necessary between the Centre and states and his government favoured decentralisation of power to the states.
Emphasising that the country had entered the age of coalition, the prime minister said that he had always stated that if one party did not get majority in the polls, it should try to forge alliance with others to run the government.
"In a democracy, differences may crop up but there are ways to resolve them," he added.
In an apparent attack on the Congress, he said that those who did not believe in coalition politics were now going for alliances.
"The whole world looks at India with curiosity as to how democracy functions in a big country like ours," he said. "The democracy in India does not depend on one individual or one party but it depends on the 100 crore population."
More from rediff