Tag: Abhijit Mukherjee

  • Abhijit Mukherjee wants to live up to his father Pranab’s legacy in new role in Trinamool Congress

    By PTI
    KOLKATA: Former President Pranab Mukherjee’s son Abhijit Mukherjee who joined the Trinamool Congress of Mamata Banerjee wants to live up to his father’s legacy of secular politics and of binding India through consensual politics.

    Mukherjee, an engineer-turned politician, said he also wants to help work towards re-industrialising eastern India, which he feels can be the trade corridor for the country’s Look East or Act East policy of connecting with East and South East Asia.

    “I have grown up believing in secular and inclusive politics which my father, our then prime minister Indira Gandhi and others of that generation of Congress leaders believed in. I cannot come anywhere near them in stature, but I think it is time those of us who are in public life took a stand and united to support the concept of a secular India,” he told PTI in an interview.

    Mukherjee, a two-time Lok Sabha MP from his father’s pocket borough of Jangipur, said he joined the Mamata Banerjee-led party because she has taken a strong stand on this issue. “The TMC has also worked to have a consensus in national politics which is what my father was known for during his political career and later as President,” he pointed out.

    The stress on secular politics and consensus building seemed like an indirect attack on the BJP, which is often accused by rival political parties of being communal and of ignoring state sensitivities. However, the younger Mukherjee refused to be drawn into a conversation on the subject.

    “I also ideologically believe in the concept of inclusive growth which takes care of the last man standing when we plan economic development and not just the rich industrial barons,” the alumnus of the Jadavpur University said, adding that “these legacy beliefs” are “shared by Mamata-di, who is herself from the same school of thought”.

    Though Pranab Mukherjee, the quincentennial Congress politician, had been Banerjee’s mentor in her early political career, the two had their differences especially when she had sought write offs of a huge debt overhang that Bengal had taken during the Left Front’s rule.

    Nevertheless, political pundits believe they shared a special relationship, which made it easy for the son to walk into the TMC camp. “My father helped former Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao, whose birth anniversary we recently celebrated, in crafting the Look East policy which this (central) government has now renamed Act East,” said Mukherjee, adding that the policy was thought out to connect India strategically to the growing markets of ASEAN and East Asia.

    “If we want that policy to succeed, we need to re- industrialise Bengal and eastern India and treat it as the fulcrum for a trade corridor to these markets,” he said. Bengal’s and eastern India’s industry has been faltering since the 1970s when a large number of factories shut shop because of economic factors and a Left-inspired wave of strikes.

    “I worked with other top managers in merging IISCO with SAIL and in reviving it by pumping in Rs 16,000 crore, possibly the largest investment in eastern India ever. There is need to work further in that direction and leverage the presence of iron ore, coal and ports to revive engineering industry here. I believe that TMC can do that and perhaps in some ways I can be of help,” said Mukherjee, who served in the public sector SAIL for two-and-a-half decades.

    IISCO which had been started by Sir RN Mookerjee more than 100 years back in Bengal, had rivalled Tata Steel in its days. After nationalization in the 1970s, it had turned into a white elephant after its plant became outdated.

    However, an effort to revive it by building Asia’s largest blast furnace and ancillary plants seems to have paid off and is expected to create a fillip by way of downstream industries in the Durgapur-Asansol industrial belt and upstream industries in Jharkhand.

    Speaking of plans apart from politics, Mukherjee said he wanted to float a think tank in his fathers name which would work in rural areas and in fostering better relations with neighbouring countries. “My father along with other leaders worked towards the good relations we now have with Bangladesh, whose 50 years are being celebrated this year,” he said.

    He took pains in building the Zaranj highway in Afghanistan, in re-starting relations with Myanmar. “These are areas this think tank could work on along with issues like rural education which was close to his heart,” the newly minted TMC politician said.

  • Former President Pranab Mukherjee’s son Abhijit joins Trinamool Congress

    By PTI
    KOLKATA: Former President Pranab Mukherjee’s son and ex-Congress MP Abhijit Mukherjee joined the Trinamool Congress here on Monday. The former two-time lawmaker from Jangipur constituency in Murshidabad district of West Bengal had been in talks with the TMC leadership over the past few weeks, party sources said.

    He was welcomed into the party by TMC leader in Lok Sabha, Sudip Bandopadhyay, amid shouts of ‘Mamata Banerjee Zindabad!’ “Didi succeeded in halting the BJP juggernaut in West Bengal. She is the most credible secular leader in the country who can fight and defeat the communal BJP. I have left one Congress to join another. We are sure of resisting the saffron camp across India in the future,” Mukherjee said.

    The newly inducted leader said that while he was in touch with Mamata Banerjee and her nephew Abhishek Banerjee before the assembly elections, had he joined the TMC before the polls, it would have been construed that he switched allegiance for some post. “I don’t hanker for any post. I work as a grassroots worker and it is up to the party to decide how to use me. I did not have any post in the Congress,” Mukherjee added.

    TMC secretary general Partha Chatterjee said the party hopes that Abhijit Mukherjee’s political acumen and sagacity will help it to ensure a “BJP-free India” in the future. “We would like to use his services appropriately to fight the communal, undemocratic and fascist forces. He is the son of Pranab Mukherjee, who was our source of inspiration on many matters. He was a politician with deep roots in secular and progressive values,” Chatterjee added.

  • Pranab Mukherjee’s son Abhijit dispels rumours of joining TMC

    By PTI
    KOLKATA: Dispelling rumours, Late President Pranab Mukherjee’s son, Abhijit Mukherjee, on Friday made it clear that he is not leaving the Congress unlike his friend Jitin Prasada.

    Television channels and a few newspapers had reported he would be joining the Trinamool Congress on Friday afternoon.

    “I remain in the Congress and reports that I am joining Trinamool or any other party are not correct,” Mukherjee, a former Lok Sabha MP and Congress Campaign Committee chairman during the assembly elections, told PTI over phone.

    Mukherjee had good relations with Jitin Prasada, who recently joined the BJP, when they were colleagues in the Congress Parliamentary Party, and the Late President was also known to be fond of him and his father Jitendra Prasada.

    Mukherjee, an engineer-turned politician who won twice from Jangipur constituency, said in a lighter vein: “I am nearly 300 km away from the Trinamool Bhavan right now, sitting in Jangipur House. So, unless someone can teleport me, it would be impossible for me to join any party this afternoon.”

    He said the rumours probably arose after some of his father’s former Congress colleagues “who are now in Trinamool” had come to have tea with him.

    “They included MP Khalilur Rahman from Jangipur, MP Abu Taher Khan from Murshidabad and TMC ministers Akhrruzzaman and Sabina Yesmin.

    “But, I have known them for long, as they were close to my father. To speculate that just because friends came to meet me, I will join TMC, is stretching it too far,” Mukherjee said.

    Pranab Mukherjee had won from Jangipur twice in 2004 and 2009, before becoming President of India.

    Several projects started by him, including a branch of the Aligarh Muslim University in the district, an Army cantonment and a management college, are now bearing fruit.

    Abhijit Mukherjee said he had also been involved with some of these projects as an MP, and most of his interactions with state leaders are based on these developments, “besides normal social relations with old friends”.