Pranab Mukherjee : Former President of India, died at 84

 

Pranab Kumar Mukherjee (11 December 1935 – 31 August 2020) was an Indian politician who served as the 13th President of India from 2012 until 2017, unfortunately, died on 31 August 2020. Before he was elected President, Mukherjee was Union Finance Minister from 2009 to 2012. He was awarded India's highest civilian honor, the Bharat Ratna in 2019 by the President of India.

 

  Former President Pranab Mukherjee. Pic/Twitter Sharmistha Mukherjee

Mukherjee got his break in politics in 1969 when he was elected to Rajya Sabha. Later he became the Finance Minister of India in 1982-84 under the Indira Gandhi government but after her assassination in 1984, Mukherjee lost out in the ensuing power struggle and very few people know that he formed his party, the Rashtriya Samajwadi Congress, which merged with the Congress in 1989. After Rajiv Gandhi's assassination in 1991, Mukherjee's political career revived when Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao appointed him the Planning Commission head in 1991 and foreign minister in 1995. When the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) came into power in 2004, Mukherjee won a Lok Sabha seat for the first time. From then until his resignation in 2012, Mukherjee held several key cabinet portfolios in Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government. After securing the UPA's nomination for the country's presidency in July 2012, Mukherjee comfortably defeated P. A. Sangma in the race to Rashtrapati Bhavan, winning 70 percent of the electoral-college vote.

 

During the COVID-19 pandemic, on 10 August 2020, Mukherjee announced on Twitter that he had tested positive for COVID-19 before his surgery to remove a blood clot in his brain. During mid of August, he went into a deep coma, however, his vital parameters remained stable. Finally on 31 August, Dr. Pranab Mukherjee died at the age of 84. The government of India announced 7-day state mourning in the respect of Mukherjee Ji. His funeral was scheduled to be held on 1 September at the Lodhi Road crematorium.

 

Mukherjee was a great leader. He spent almost five decades of his life in the progress of the nation. Many important bills like GST and Demonetisation acted under his term. His quick rejection of the mercy petitions of Ajmal Kasab, the only survivor among the perpetrators of 26/11, and Mohammad Afzal Guru, the main accused in the case of the attack on Parliament in 2001, has helped the Congress-led UPA government neutralize its critics who say this is an administration that is soft on terror. He wrote many books like The Coailation Years; The Dramatic Decade; The Turbulent Years; are famous among them. He played a vital role in the finance ministry as he was considered the architect of the Direct Tax Code, which never got implemented. Under the code, Pranab Mukherjee proposed to replace the Income Tax Act with an aim to widen the income tax base. He proposed to raise the exemption limit and introduce some changes in the tax slabs. Now, the Narendra Modi government is also planning a complete overhaul of the Income Tax Act, which is being called an effort to reintroduce the Direct Tax Code.