Pranab Mukherjee had tough time with issues of Sri Lankan Tamils, Telangana

The last phase of the civil war in Sri Lanka, the demand for a separate Telangana state and the crisis in the then united Andhra Pradesh spawned due to the death of Y S Rajasekhara Reddy are some of the major issues concerning Southern India during the UPA-I and II regimes.

And it was Pranab Mukherjee, the chief trouble-shooter of the Congress-led coalition, who handled the sensitive issues from the front. The Sri Lankan Tamils issue was always an emotive one in Tamil Nadu and the DMK, which was the prime mover in the UPA-I regime, even threatened to quit the coalition.

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On the Telangana issue, TRS chief K Chandrashekar Rao, who aligned with Congress in 2004, kept raking up the issue every now and then and had even quit the coalition when the promise was not kept. Mukherjee also headed the cabinet sub-committee on reorganisation of states.

And when Reddy died in a helicopter crash in September 2009 and Andhra Pradesh plunged into a political crisis, Mukherjee was again on the centerstage meeting leaders supporting the current Chief Minister Y S Jaganmohan Reddy and those opposing his ascension to the top chair of the Congress regime in the state.

Whenever the Congress wanted to send across a message to its own men, be it Jagan or MPs from Telangana, it did rely on Mukherjee to convey it.

And when the Congress was upset with Jagan and the Gandhis did not want to meet the then rebel themselves, the job was again given to Mukherjee. That Jagan Reddy rebelled against the Gandhis and succeeded in capturing the CM’s chair denied to him in 2009, at least a decade later, is a different story altogether.

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“He was a legendary figure and when we entered Parliament for the first time, Mukherjee saab was the leader of the Lok Sabha. He supported the Telangana cause, but would never shy away from scolding us if we disrupted Parliament proceedings.

He would sometimes be harsh, but none would take it the wrong way because of his experience and his stature,” Ponnam Prabhakar, former Congress MP from Karimnagar, told DH.

Every time, the alliance partners created trouble for the coalition, then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress President Sonia Gandhi turned to Mukherjee to solve the crisis.

As the three-decade-old civil war in Sri Lanka entered its last phase in late 2008, the DMK mounted intense pressure on the UPA to “save innocent Tamils in the shelling” by Sri Lankan forces, Mukherjee was the cynosure of all eyes as he was not just the peacemaker of the coalition but the country’s foreign minister as well.

“He was certainly the crisis manager for the Congress. Since he was External Affairs Minister during the Eelam war, I had met him several times to save civilians in northern Sri Lankan from the army’s shelling.

He was a good listener and would be prepared to answer all the questions. He did travel to Sri Lanka on the request of my leader late M Karunanidhi,” former Union Minister and Mukherjee’s colleague T R Baalu told DH.

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In October 2008, when DMK MPs threatened to resign en masse, Mukherjee held several consultations with Karunanidhi over the phone and even flew down on the eve of Deepavali that year to get a commitment that he “will not precipitate any crisis” for the UPA regime.

Mukherjee also maintained good relations with Karunanidhi that he broke the protocol after being elected as President and met the late DMK patriarch at his residence during his visit to Chennai in 2012. “It was my leader Kalaignar (Karunanidhi) who proposed Mukherjee’s name for the Presidency. They had known each other for several decades and cherished their friendship,” Baalu added.