New Delhi: Sonia Gandhi’s revelation in her memoir about Pranab Mukherjee pushing for a “change at the top” in 2010, which she understood as “a hint of his long-held desire to become the Prime Minister,” have drawn sharp reactions from the former President’s daughter Sharmistha Mukherjee.
“What’s there to get shocked about?….Whatever he achieved in his life was through sheer merit and hard work. There was no one to serve him positions, including PMship, on a platter due to dynastic entitlements,” Sharmistha wrote on micro-blogging platform X.
Adding, “If a well-deserving person harbours ambition to become Prime Minister, what’s wrong in that unless Soniaji was shocked by the fact that anyone outside Gandhi-Nehru family could even dare to nurture such an ambition and furthermore dared to ‘hint’ it to her?”
Sharmistha had “quit politics” in 2021. She, however, declared at the time: “I remain & will continue to remain a primary member of Congress.”
In her memoir, Belonging: A Journey of Love, Sonia Gandhi said that Pranab Mukherjee “shocked” her with the suggestion that “perhaps it was time for a change at the top”.
“I gently changed the subject, and though he may have been disappointed, he never made me feel he held it against me. Our party did nominate him in 2012 as the UPA candidate for President, the highest office in the country, and he was elected,” Sonia wrote.
In a different section of the just-released memoir, Sonia Gandhi also wrote about Pranab Mukherjee quitting the Congress in 1984, ‘feeling sidestepped’ when Rajiv Gandhi became Prime Minister. She added that Mukherjee never lost his aspiration and he returned to the Congress party five years later.
Sharmistha also quoted her father as having said, when she asked him if he wished to be Prime Minister, ‘any politician worth his salt has this ambition’.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
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