Sonia Gandhi has reopened one of Indian politics’ oldest arguments, revealing in her new memoir that former president Pranab Mukherjee once hinted to her that he wanted to replace Manmohan Singh as prime minister.
In “Belonging: A Journey of Love”, published by HarperCollins India and released on Tuesday, Gandhi recalls a conversation in 2010 in which Mukherjee, then a senior minister in the Congress-led government, suggested that perhaps it was “time for a change at the top”. She writes that she understood the remark as a hint of his long-held desire to become prime minister.
According to Gandhi, the exchange followed a period in which Mukherjee had developed serious differences with the then finance minister, P. Chidambaram. She says she was taken aback by the suggestion and gently changed the subject. “Though he may have been disappointed, he never made me feel he held it against me,” she writes.
The conversation took place during the second term of the United Progressive Alliance government, when Singh was prime minister and Gandhi led the Congress party. In the memoir, Gandhi describes an “unspoken division of responsibility” between the two: Singh ran the government while she managed the party, coordinated through a weekly core group that included Mukherjee, Arjun Singh, A. K. Antony and Ahmed Patel.
Gandhi uses the book to reject the long-standing charge that she ran the government from outside the constitutional framework while Singh was prime minister. She maintains she never summoned executive files or dictated administrative appointments, and that the arrangement rested on mutual trust.
Two years after the 2010 conversation, the Congress nominated Mukherjee as its candidate for president. He won the election and served as India’s 13th president from 2012 to 2017. He died in August 2020.
The revelation drew a swift response from Mukherjee’s daughter, Sharmistha Mukherjee, who questioned why her father’s ambition should have come as a surprise, arguing that his long record in public life gave him every reason to aspire to the country’s highest political office.
The account rests on Gandhi’s own telling in the memoir; Mukherjee, who died in 2020, cannot respond to it, and the conversation was private for 16 years before its publication.
Sources: IANS, https://ianslive.in/did-pranab-harbour-a-desire-for-the-top-chair-in-2010-sonia-recalls-hint-in-memoir–20261110142406 ; AIR News, https://www.airnews.in/articles/46e8c403b3-sonia-gandhi-memoir-reveals-pranab-mukherjee-pushed-for-prime-minister-post-in-2010 ; The Daily Jagran, https://www.thedailyjagran.com/india/news/sonia-gandhi-belonging-a-journey-of-love-pranab-mukherjee-sharmistha-mukherjee-questions-sonia-gandhis-shock-over-fathers-pm-ambition-10335810
