Pranab Mukherjee

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Mukherjee started his political career in 1967 as a founding member of the Bangla Congress. Ahead of the 1967 election, he played a crucial role in forging the United Front alliance against the Indian National Congress. In 1969, he managed the successful Midnapore by-election campaign of an independent candidate, V. K. Krishna Menon. He became a member of the Rajya Sabha (the upper house of Indian parliament) in July 1969 on a Bangla Congress ticket. Mukherjee soon became the medium of exchanging confidential notes between Indira Gandhi and Ajoy Mukherjee. In 1972, Indira Gandhi recruited him to the Indian National Congress along with merging the Bangla Congress into the party. Mukherjee was re-elected to the house in 1975, 1981, 1993, and 1999.

He became a Gandhi loyalist and was often described as her "man for all seasons." Mukherjee's rise was rapid in the early phase of his career and he was appointed Union Deputy Minister of Industrial Development in Indira Gandhi's cabinet in 1973. He was active in the Indian cabinet during the controversial Internal Emergency of 1975–77. Ruling Congress politicians of the day including Mukherjee were accused of using extra-constitutional powers to "wreck established norms and rules of governance". Following Congress's defeat in the 1977 general elections, the newly formed Janata government-appointed Shah Commission indicted Mukherjee; however, the commission was itself indicted in 1979 for stepping "outside its jurisdiction". Mukherjee emerged unscathed and rose through a series of cabinet posts to become Finance Minister from 1982 to 1984.

His term was noted for his work in improving the finances of the government, which enabled Gandhi to score a political point by returning the last instalment of India's first IMF loan. As Finance Minister, Mukherjee signed the letter appointing Manmohan Singh as Governor of the Reserve Bank of India.

In 1979, Mukherjee became Deputy Leader of the INC in the Rajya Sabha, and in 1980, he was appointed Leader of the House. He was considered the top-ranking Indian cabinet minister and he presided over cabinet meetings in the absence of the Prime Minister.

Mukherjee was sidelined from the INC following the assassination of Indira Gandhi. Although he was much more experienced in politics than Indira's son, Rajiv Gandhi, it was Rajiv who gained control. Mukherjee lost his position in the cabinet and was sent to manage the regional West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee. He was considered to be Indira's likely successor and, siding with those within his party who aligned themselves against Rajiv Gandhi, Mukherjee was sidelined and eventually expelled from the mainstream.

In 1986, Mukherjee founded another party, the Rashtriya Samajwadi Congress (RSC), in West Bengal. The RSC and INC merged three years later after a compromise was reached 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 to his inability to emerge as a magnetic mass leader. On later being asked whether he ever desired to become Prime Minister, Mukherjee replied, "7 RCR was never my destination." 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. He served as External Affairs Minister for the first time from 1995 to 1996 in Rao's cabinet.

Mukherjee was considered to be a Gandhi family loyalist and the principal architect of Sonia Gandhi's entry into politics, a mentoring responsibility he was believed to have continued 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 declined to become Prime Minister; however, Manmohan Singh was chosen instead.

Mukherjee was briefly considered for the post of the largely ceremonial Indian presidency in 2007, but his name was subsequently dropped after his contribution to the Union Cabinet was considered practically indispensable.

He 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. Apart from being Leader of the House in the Lok Sabha and Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee President, he also headed the Congress Parliamentary Party and the Congress Legislative Party, which consist of all the Congress MP's and MLA's in the country.

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: "[the] decades of activity in critical all-rounder roles make [Mukherjee's] 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 Venkataraman's did, at the Rashtrapati Bhavan".

Mukherjee was "very well respected within the party social circles". Media accounts describe him as having "a reputation as a number-crunching politician with a phenomenal memory and an unerring survival instinct".

He became a member of the Congress Working Committee on 27 January 1978. He also became a member of the Central Parliamentary Board of the All India Congress Committee (AICC) that year. Mukherjee briefly held the position of treasurer of the AICC and the Congress party in 1978.

He was appointed chairman of the Campaign Committee of the AICC for conducting National Elections to Parliament in 1984, 1991, 1996, and 1998. He was chairman of the Central Election Coordination Committee of the AICC from 28 June 1999 to 2012. He was appointed to the Central Election Committee on 12 December 2001. Mukherjee was appointed General Secretary of the AICC in 1998. In 1997, he was voted Outstanding Parliamentarian by the Indian Parliamentary Group.

After Sonia Gandhi reluctantly agreed to join politics, Mukherjee was one of her mentors, guiding her through difficult situations with examples of how her mother-in-law, Indira Gandhi, would have done things. His talents were on display during the negotiations for the Patents Amendment Bill in early 2005. Congress was committed to passing an IP bill, but their allies in the United Progressive Alliance from the Left front had a long tradition of opposing some of the monopoly aspects of intellectual property. Mukherjee, as Defence Minister, was not formally involved but was roped in for his negotiation skills. He drew on many old allies including the CPI-M leader Jyoti Basu (former Chief Minister of West Bengal), and formed new intermediary positions, which included product patents. Then, he had to convince his own colleagues, including commerce minister Kamal Nath, who at one point said..."An imperfect legislation is better than no legislation". Finally, on 23 March 2005, the bill was approved.

India Today wrote that Mukherjee's role in "skillfully pushing through the historic 123 Agreement and treaty with the Nuclear Suppliers Group" may have saved the UPA-II government from the 2008 motion of no confidence.

Mukherjee played a crucial role in steering the Cabinet pre-Lok Sabha elections when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh underwent a heart bypass surgery in 2008–09 by taking additional charges as chairman of the Cabinet Committee of Political Affairs and Union Minister in the Finance Ministry despite already being Union Minister of External Affairs.

Mukherjee's political skills and long experience in government have also led him to head a large number of committees of ministers in the government. At the time of his resignation, on being nominated as the UPA's presidential candidate, Mukherjee was heading several Groups of Ministers (GoMs) and Empowered Groups of Ministers (EGoMs).

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