Pranab Mukherjee was ‘aghast’ at Rahul Gandhi’s bid to trash ordinance, ‘humiliate PM’: Daughter

Mukherjee, Sharmistha notes, had stated that Rahul was “very courteous” and “full of questions” but “yet to mature politically” and that the then Congress vice-president’s decision to “gate-crash” a press conference and “vehemently” trash a proposed government ordinance – meant to overturn a Supreme Court ruling in favour of the immediate disqualification of a legislator if convicted of a criminal offence – in September 2013 was the “final nail in the coffin” for Congress prospects in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.

“Pranab himself was against the ordinance… in principle, he agreed with Rahul. But he was aghast at the manner in which Rahul acted…’Who does he (Rahul) think he is? He is not a member of the Cabinet. Who is he to publicly trash a decision of Cabinet? The Prime Minister is abroad…What right does he have to humiliate the PM like this?’” Sharmistha recalls her father as saying.

That night, she says, Mukherjee wrote in his diary, “’Rahul Gandhi gate-crashed a press conference by Ajay Maken and described the decision of Cabinet as ‘nonsense’. This is totally uncalled for. He has all the arrogance of his Gandhi–Nehru lineage without their political acumen…’”. She writes that she thought “his faith in Rahul was shaken after this incident”.

Rahul, Sharmistha says, visited Pranab after the Congress’s “disastrous defeat” in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections during which he found it “surprising” that Rahul gave his views on the party’s performance “in a most detached way, from a distance as an outsider as if he was not the face of the campaign”.

“‘Perhaps his distance from the party and a lack of killer instinct could be reasons for his failure to enthuse the party workers to fight the election which BJP got from Narendra Modi.’” she quotes her father as saying.

Mukherjee was also “disappointed” by Rahul’s “frequent disappearing acts” since he believed that serious politics was “a 24×7, 365-day job” and Rahul’s “frequent breaks” were “causing him to lose the perception battle”, she writes.

Sharmistha, who unsuccessfully contested the Delhi Assembly elections in 2015 on a Congress ticket, also refers to her father’s sense of similarities between Indira Gandhi – who once, according to her father, suggested that he take classes to remedy his “thick Bengali-accented English” – and Prime Minister Modi who called him “a towering personality” soon after the BJP-led NDA swept the 2014 elections.

“Baba (Mukherjee) mentioned to me multiple times that, in his opinion, Narendra Modi is the only PM after Indira Gandhi, who has the ability to feel the pulse of the people so acutely and accurately…” Sharmishtha writes, referring to a diary entry by her father dated October 23, 2014.

As regards Manmohan Singh and her father’s view of him, she states: “As president, Pranab thought about awarding the Bharat Ratna to Dr Singh.”

She goes on to quote a diary entry of Mukherjee from October 30, 2013: “’I discussed with Cabinet Secretary the idea of conferring Bharat Ratna to PM Dr Manmohan Singh. He is recognised all over the world as a great economist… I asked Cabinet Secretary to…ascertain views of Sonia Gandhi and let me know…’” The next year, however, she notes, the Bharat Ratna was awarded to C N R Rao and Sachin Tendulkar.

In the context of Sonia Gandhi preferring Manmohan over Mukherjee, Sharmistha mentions the “trust deficit” the Gandhi family had with her father but says that the perception that Mukherjee had staked claim to the Prime Minister’s post after the assassination of Indira Gandhi was “factually incorrect”.

Although Mukherjee’s own relationship with Sonia was “nothing remarkable”, Sharmistha writes, over time he “developed a close and warm working relationship with Sonia” and felt that she was “intelligent, hardworking and keen to learn. Once he told me that unlike many political leaders, her biggest strength was that she knew and recognized her weaknesses and was willing to work hard to overcome them.”