Pranab Mukherjee - Political Career

Political Career

Mukherjee got involved in the politics of the Indian National Congress in 1969. He had managed the successful election campaign for independent candidate Krishna Menon during the by-elections in Midnapore. Prime Minister and Congress supreme leader Indira Gandhi recognized his talents and made him a part of her party. Gandhi gave Mukherjee a seat in the Rajya Sabha (upper house) of the parliament from the Congress party in July 1969. Mukherjee was later re-elected in 1975, 1981, 1993 and 1999.

Mukherjee became a staunch Indira Gandhi loyalist. He was described as her "man for all seasons". Mukherjee's rise was meteoric in the early phase of his career and he was appointed Union Deputy Minister of Industrial Development in Indira Gandhi's cabinet in 1973. Mukherjee was active in the Indian cabinet during the Emergency. Ruling politicians of the day including Mukherjee were accused of using extra-constitutional power centres to "wreck established norms and rules of governance". The Shah commission under the Janata party indicted Mukherjee but the commission was itself later indicted for stepping "outside its jurisdiction" in 1979. Mukherjee emerged from it unscathed and rose through a series of cabinet posts to become the Finance Minister of India from 1982 to 1984. His term was noted for his work in improving the finances of the government that enabled Indira Gandhi to score a political point returning the last instalment of India's first IMF loan. It was Pranab Mukherjee – in his stint as Indira Gandhi's Finance Minister – that had signed the letter appointing Dr. Manmohan Singh as Governor of the Reserve Bank of India.

Indira Gandhi made Mukherjee the Deputy Leader of the Congress in the Rajya Sabha in 1978. He was made Leader of the House in the Rajya Sabha in 1980. Mukherjee was considered the top ranking Indian cabinet minister and he even presided over the cabinet meetings in the absence of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

Mukherjee was sidelined from the Congress during the Rajiv Gandhi era. It was suggested that he "was not forgiven for suggesting in a way after the assassination of Indira Gandhi that he was the most qualified and the next in line to succeed her." Mukherjee was subsequently marginalised in the party; losing his Cabinet berth and being demoted to take over the regional Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee. It was speculated that a new generation of Congress leaders close to Rajiv Gandhi were "responsible for most of what was happening to ." " group had emerged as the new power brokers in the party and the Indira loyalists were no longer seen as needed."

Mukherjee quit the Indian National Congress in 1986. He floated the Rashtriya Samajwadi Congress (RSC) in West Bengal which he would merge with the Indian National Congress three years later after reaching a compromise with Rajiv Gandhi. The RSC had fared terribly in the 1987 Assembly polls in West Bengal. Many analysts, over the years, have attributed the muting of Mukherjee's political aspirations as the supreme leader due to his inability to emerge as a magnetic mass leader. On later being asked that did he ever desire to become Prime Minister, Mukherjee, however, replied, "7 RCR was never my destination." The Zee News noted: "The statement assumes heft in the light of the longstanding speculation that Mukherjee, as one of the doyens of Congress, always nursed an ambition to occupy the top executive post."

Mukherjee's political career revived following the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in 1991 when P. V. Narasimha Rao chose to appoint him as deputy chairman of the Indian planning commission and subsequently as a union cabinet minister. Mukherjee served as External Affairs Minister for the first time from 1995 to 1996 in Rao's cabinet.

Mukherjee today is considered to be a Gandhi family loyalist and the principal architect of Sonia Gandhi's entry into politics, a mentoring responsibility he is still believed to be shouldering. He was made General Secretary of the AICC in 1998–99 after Sonia Gandhi became Congress President. Mukherjee was made President of the West Bengal Congress in 2000 and held the position until his resignation in 2010. He had earlier held the position in 1985.

Mukherjee became Leader of the House in the Lok Sabha in 2004. He contested and won a Lok Sabha seat from Jangipur in West Bengal which he would later retain in 2009. It was speculated in 2004 that Mukherjee would be made Prime Minister of India after Sonia Gandhi unexpectedly declined the position. However, Gandhi eventually nominated Manmohan Singh to become Prime Minister.

Mukherjee was briefly considered for the post of the largely ceremonial Indian presidency in 2007. But his name was subsequently dropped after his contribution in the Union Cabinet was considered practically indispensable. Regardless, the India Today went on to opine that Mukherjee should be made President. The magazine wrote: " would please the many who see Mukherjee as the best prime minister India never had. It would also lay the ghosts of the past and confirm a confident Congress leadership's ability to acknowledge its debt to the man in whom Indira Gandhi placed her trust."

Mukherjee held many important posts in the Manmohan Singh government. He had the distinction of being the Minister for various high profile Ministries including Defence, Finance, and External Affairs. Mukherjee also headed the Congress Parliamentary Party and the Congress Legislative Party which consists of all the Congress MPs and MLAs in the country apart from being Leader of the House in Lok Sabha and Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee President.

Mukherjee ended his affiliation with the Indian National Congress and retired from active political life following his election as President in 2012. The Economic Times had noted: " decades of activity in critical all-round roles make exit both a structural and generation shift. With him, the last of the Congress triumvirate – along with Rao and R Venkataraman – who formed the core team of Indira/Rajiv regimes bows out. While Rao became PM, Pranab's political marathon too ends where did, at the Rashtrapati Bhavan."