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 said that when her father and the former Indian President died in August 2020, the Congress leadership never even bothered to call a condolence meeting by the Congress Working Committee (CWC).
She had also accused the Congress leadership of misleading her during that time on this issue.
According to her, it is not for Indian Presidents, she was told by a senior leader of the Congress. Terming that logic by the Congress leader whom she referred to as utter rubbish, she 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 quoted another post by one person C.R. Kesavan that described how Congress had slighted other statesmen of the party simply because they were not part of the "Gandhi" family.
On this issue, a reference was drawn towards a chapter in the book 'The Accidental Prime Minister' penned by the media advisor of Dr Singh from 2004-2009 and the erstwhile editor-in-chief of Financial Express Dr Sanjaya Baru, mentioning how the Congress-led UPA government had never build a memorial in Delhi after the demise of former Indian Prime Minister Late P.V. Narasimha Rao, who had departed this mortal coil in the year 2004 itself.
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.
Read also| RSS Pays Tribute to Manmohan Singh: His Contributions to Bharat Will Always Be Remembered
