“They are spoilers,” said Singh.

His appeal comes even as sitting Congress MP Milind Deora is contending in Mumbai South with two Independents — banker Meera Sanyal and Dr Mona Shah — who are threatening to eat into Deora’s vote base from the upper class, especially in the wake of the anger over 26/11. Deora is pitted against Shiv Sena’s Mohan Rawle and MNS candidate Bala Nandgaonkar.

The Prime Minister, speaking on L K Advani’s allegations that black money from India was stashed away in banks abroad, said the government was considering necessary action to unearth the money and that contact had been established with the authorities in the relevant countries for information. At the G-20 a decision was also taken to regulate the conduct of tax havens, Singh said. He, however, termed figures of black money quoted by Advani as a “figment of the imagination”.

On the growing importance of regional parties, Singh said they were here to stay and the political system needed resilience to create an environment where national and regional parties could work together.

On the global economic crisis, he said though India had been affected, the measures taken by the government had ensured that the “impact was not as severe” as in other countries.

Speaking on the Satyam scandal, he said that while companies had gone bust in Europe, Britain and the United States, the fraud that had taken place in India “was confined to one entity” with the regulatory system having the strength and resilience to ensure it did not take place again.

Speaking to a gathering earlier, Singh said he still felt pained about the innocent people who lost their lives in the 26/11 attacks and said “that attack was an attack on each one of us.”