NEW DELHI: Pranab Mukherjee contested the 1980 Lok Sabha elections much against the wishes of Indira Gandhi who gave him a “vociferous dressing down” for an “interminable span of time” after his defeat but he made a dramatic entry into the Union Cabinet despite the loss.
Such was the faith in him that Indira Gandhi also made him the Leader of the House in the Rajya Sabha over the claims of other senior contenders including the late A P Sharma.
Now President, Mukherjee trashes as rumours stemming from “fertile imaginations” that he was included in the Cabinet because Indira Gandhi wanted to have a team of 22, an astrologically auspicious number, after Bhagawat Jha Azad had refused to be sworn in.
Mukherjee recollects all these events of the days when Indira Gandhi returned to power in January, 1980 in his just-released book, “The Dramatic Decade: The Indira Gandhi Years” brought out by Rupa Publications.
“Indira Gandhi headed into the 1980 elections strong and confident as ever. While I was all for choosing core and loyal Congressmen to contest, Indira Gandhi advised me to ‘choose people who could run the government’, so confident was she of her electoral success.
“She had strongly advised me against contesting the Lok Sabha elections in 1980, but gave in at my insistence. I contested the election from Bolpur constituency, and was defeated by a margin of 68,629 votes… The decisive vote demoralised me.”
Mukherjee writes in the book that his wife Geeta had already left for Delhi when the results came out and she called on the same day asking him to come back to Delhi as Gandhi wanted to meet him.
“I returned to Delhi by the evening flight and went straight to Willingdon Crescent to meet Indira Gandhi. It would not be an understatement to say that she was unhappy about my insistence to contest the election.”
He says Sanjay Gandhi told him that she had been upset ever since she had heard of his defeat, and she made her displeasure evident when he met her.
“I was unambiguously chastised. It was about 9pm and Indira Gandhi was sitting in the dining room at one end of the long dining table. She had a bad cold and was soaking her feet in a tub of warm water.
“Standing at the other end of the dining table, I received a vociferous dressing-down for what seemed to be an interminable span of time. I was rebuked for taking the ill-advised decision of contesting from Bolpur, against her advice, and was told that such imprudent decisions nullified all my other hard work,” he recollects of that evening encounter with Gandhi.
The media was rife with speculation about the proposed Cabinet and no one mentioned Mukherjee’s name because everyone had taken it for granted that his defeat would leave him out of the government.(PTI)