Pranab Mukherjee has a reason to be upset, more qualified for PM: Manmohan Singh

Singh recalled his long association with Mukherjee, talking fondly about the times when he was Finance Secretary and Mukherjee the Minister of State for Finance in the 1970s; when he was RBI Governor and Mukherjee was Finance Minister in the 1980s; and, in the 1990s, when they were colleagues in the Narasimha Rao Cabinet. Singh said while Mukherjee was a politician by choice, he entered the profession by “accident.” Thought Sonia would make Singh President, I could be PM: Pranab Mukherjee

“Then came 2004 and Soniaji chose me to be the Prime Minister. And Pranabji was the most distinguished colleague that I had. He had every reason to feel a grievance that he was better qualified than I was to become the Prime Minister. But he also knew that I had no choice in the matter,” he said. Sitting in the front row in the audience was Gandhi and Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi.

“He had every reason to believe that he should be the Prime Minister, that didn’t happen. But that didn’t affect our relationship and that relationship of thick and abiding friendship will last, will last as long we both are living.

“We ran the government as a cohesive team of which Pranab Mukherjee was the most important member….I do not recall any matter, any serious issue on which we had differences of opinion. I invariably took note of the fact that he was one of the most seniormost members of our party…was my most seniormost colleague and together with Sharad Pawarji and Pranabji, I had the greatest regard and respect….Both of them were men of great calibre whose voice need to be heard and whose views were respected,” Singh said.

Singh said “if the UPA cabinet worked very smoothly, a large measure of credit goes to Pranabji.” The Former Prime Minister said “contrary to what people may say or write, the UPA government was a very smoothly running government. There were no tensions in our Parliament.” Singh said as a mark of his regard and respect for Mukherjee, he turned to him “whenever a difficult matter was to be discussed in the Cabinet and I devised the instrument of Group of Ministers and, invariably, I turned to Pranabji to head the GoMs and he came with solutions which the cabinet was very pleased to endorse.”

Speaking before Singh, Mukherjee said he was perhaps one of the only living Congressmen who had the opportunity to be in the Congress Working Committee “from 1978 onwards excepting a few years in between till 2012.” He said it was a rare distinction for any Congressmen. Talking about 2004, he said the Congress providing the leadership to a coalition government was a major change in the Indian politics.

“Because always I believed that Congress is a coalition. Congress brings in one platform, various ideas, personalities and groups of interests…therefore to provide the leadership of a coalition by Congress is difficult as to manage to one coalition within and another coalition outside.”

“But nonetheless that was done and for ten years very successfully, Dr Manmohan Singh with the support of the coalition partners discharged that tremendous responsibility….” On the dais were CPM General Secretary Sitaram Yechury, his CPI counterpart S Sudhakar Reddy, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav and DMK leader Kanimozhi.