‘Mukherjee had every reason to believe he was more qualified’

NEW DELHI: Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday said that his former colleague Pranab Mukherjee, who was part of the UPA cabinet, had every reason to have a grievance that he was better qualified than him to become the PM, but he also knew that“I had no choice in the matter.”

Singh said this at the launch of former President Pranab Mukherjee’s latest volume in the autobiographical series, The Coalition Years — 1996-2012.

The book was released in the presence of representatives of the parties who formed the coalition government headed by Manmohan Singh in 2004, including CPI(M) and Samajwadi Party. Congress president Sonia Gandhi and vice-president Rahul were among the attendees. “He (Mukherjee) had every reason to believe he would be the PM. That did not happen but it did not affect our relationship… that relationship of deep and abiding friendship will last and last as long as we are living,” Singh said. The former PM said that contrary to what people may say or write, the UPA government ran very “smoothly”. “There was no tension and as a mark of respect and trust for Pranab ji, I turned to him whenever a difficult matter was to be discussed in the cabinet,” he said.

CPI (M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury said that once again the “paradigm of coalition” is coming back in Indian politics. Yechury’s party was part of the UPA-I coalition but withdrew support on the issue of Indo-US nuclear deal.

“India itself is a grand coalition and you cannot have a political monolithic structure which is social pluralistic structure in our society. This cannot gel. The social plurality, the cultural plurality, the diversity has to reflect in polity and more often than not it would reflect itself in the coalition government,” Yechury said.