Sharmistha Mukherjee slams Congress proposal seeking memorial for Manmohan Singh

Kolkata (The Uttam Hindu): Sharmistha Mukherjee, the daughter of former President Late Pranab Mukherjee, has criticised Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge’s proposal to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, seeking a separate memorial for former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh. Dr. Manmohan Singh died of age-related illnesses at Delhi’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) on Thursday night. He was 92. In a statement on X, Sharmistha claimed that when her father and the former Indian President died in August 2020, the Congress leadership did not even bother to convene a condolence meeting by the Congress Working Committee (CWC).

She had even accused the Congress leadership of misleading her on this issue during that time. According to her, a senior leader of the Congress told her that it is not for Indian Presidents. Terming this logic by the Congress leader whom she referred to as utter rubbish, she had also claimed that she learnt from her father’s diaries that on the demise of another former Indian President K.R. Narayanan, a CWC meeting was called and the condolence message was drafted by none other than Pranab Mukherjee. Sharmishtha Mukherjee has referred to another post by one individual C.R. Kesavan, which highlighted how Congress had disregarded other statesmen from the party just because they were not members of the “Gandhi” family.

On this issue, a reference had been drawn to a chapter in the book ‘The Accidental Prime Minister’ penned by Dr Singh’s media advisor from 2004 to 2009 and the former editor-in-chief of Financial Express Dr Sanjaya Baru, where it had been mentioned how the Congress-led UPA government never built a memorial in Delhi for former Indian Prime Minister Late P.V. Narasimha Rao, who passed away in 2004. In the book, it was also mentioned that Congress never built a memorial for Rao despite being in power from 2004 to 2014. Baru in his book had also claimed that Congress did not even want Rao’s cremation to happen in New Delhi but rather in his native place of Hyderabad.