India has achieved great progress in the last 10 years, the Prime Minister's Office said Friday, in a bid to defend an embattled Manmohan Singh.

"GDP has grown three times in the last 10 years. Minimum wages have also gone up three times. This shows the government is working continuously," the Prime Minister's media adviser Pankaj Pachauri told the media in the national capital, hailing the way India has progressed in the last 10 years.

He said that "the information is not reaching the people because the media's priority is different."

Though the 81-year-old economist has decided not to run for the premiership again, Singh's image has been tarnished recently in the wake of a book penned by his former media adviser, Sanjaya Baru, which claims the Prime Minister "is in office, but never in power" because Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi has been calling the shots.

India is in the midst of general elections, and opinion polls suggest that the Congress party is facing its worst ever defeat due to its inability to tackle corruption and inflation while the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party is likely to form the next government with Narendra Modi as the prime minister.