Sonia Gandhi's Memoir Reveals Pranab Mukherjee's Ambitions to be Prime Minister

Sonia Gandhi reveals in her memoir Belonging: A Journey of Love , released Tuesday by HarperCollins India how Pranab Mukherjee in 2010 once hinted at being considered for the prime minister’s post. Gandhi writes how Mukherjee, who was a member of the core group of the party, which met weekly with the prime minister to ensure coordination between the party and the government, once stayed back after one such meeting and said: “perhaps it was time for a change at the top”. Gandhi writes she understood this “as a hint of his long-held desire to become prime minister. I gently changed the subject…” However, she writes Mukherjee never held it against her, even though he may have been disappointed. She writes that Mukherjee at that time had developed serious differences with P Chidambaram . Mukherjee was later appointed President of India in 2012, and Gandhi writes how she often called on him to converse “with the erudite and knowledgeable politician that he always remained.” In another incident, Gandhi recalls how Mukherjee asserted himself when Prince Edward greeted the Union Cabinet as “And you lot – who are you?”, during a lunch to honour chief guest Prince Charles at the Commonwealth Games held in New Delhi in 2010. Charles was accompanied by Camilla and Edward. Gandhi recalls the stunned silence when Edward uttered the words, to which Mukherjee “drawing himself up to his full height of five foot three inches, said stiffly, ‘I am Pranab Mukherjee, the finance minister of India, and these are my cabinet colleagues’.”