Will be back as an ordinary citizen, says Pranab
“I will come back as an ordinary citizen of India,” President Pranab Mukherjee said at a public meeting on Friday.
It shouldn’t be tough for the 81-year-old to switch roles, again. Five years ago, when he entered the Rashtrapati Bhavan as India’s 13th President he left behind a political career that was spread over 50 years.
But, he adapted well to the relative quiet of the presidential office after the hurly-burly of Indian politics. He found things that kept him busy.
First and foremost, he decided to set his house in order. Mukherjee decided to restore the Rashtrapati Bhavan’s glory, digging deep for pieces of history stored away in many of the 340 rooms of the Rashtrapati Bhavan.
He was not averse to taking harddecisionseither.Mukherjee cleared 32 mercy petitions, some of them pending since 2000. He rejected 28 of them, including those of 26/11 Mumbai attacker Ajmal Kasab and Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru, the most by a President.
Two years after Mukherjee moved into the Rashtrapati Bhavan, the BJP stormed to power at the Centre with a brute majority.
There were differences of opinion between him and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, but it didn’t affect their relation, he said.
“Surely there have been divergences of views, between me and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. But we have been able to keep divergences only to ourselves, that didn’t affect our relation,” Mukherjee said a few days ago.
For Prime Minister Modi, Mukherjee was a mentor. “In my initial days, Pranabda held my hand to help me settle in Delhi,” the Prime Minister said.
Never the destiny’s favourite child, the man from Mirati, a small village in Bengal, rose to occupy India’s highest office.
He will be remembered as the president who brought the Rashtrapati Bhavan closer to India’s people.