Pranab Mukherjee | Hearing a mouthful from Indira and the tale of missing chair in swearing-in ceremony

On 14 January, 1980, Pranab Mukherjee walked into Rashtrapati Bhavan's Ashoka Hall to take oath as a Cabinet Minister but there was no seat for him in the row of ministers to be sworn in.

Only 90 min before, Indira Gandhi's all powerful aide R K Dhawan telephoned him to be in Rashtrapati Bhavan for the swearing in. Two days before, he had met Indira but she had not indicated that he would be in her Cabinet.

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A puzzled Mukherjee looked at Indira, who had returned to power after her post-Emergency debacle in 1977 elections, and she realised there was something wrong and nodded at Dhawan, who rushed to Mukherjee and told him to wait.

Indira's office had sent Mukherjee's name too but everyone was puzzled why no seat was earmarked for him. Dhawan immediately reached out to the then Cabinet Secretary and then consulted the President's Secretary.

Soon, the mystery was unravelled. Except for Mukherjee, the letter recommending the names of all ministers were typed while his was handwritten, which led to the President's Secretariat inadvertently missing it and no seat assigned to him as a consequence.

Mukherjee recalled that Indira herself then wrote another letter in hand sitting at the Rashtrapati Bhavan and got it delivered to the President's Secretary. Mukherjee sat between P V Narasimha Rao, who became Prime Minister in 1991, and R Venkitaraman, who became President in 1987.

The swearing-in ceremony was not devoid of drama as Bhagwat Jha Azad, cricketer-turned-politician Kirti Azad's father, had walked out in a huff as he was upset that he did not get a Cabinet berth. A media report had then suggested that Mukherjee was accommodated at the last minute after Azad's walkout, as Indira wanted a 22-member team, an "astronomically auspicious number". Mukherjee rubbished it as "rumours stemming from fertile imaginations".

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However, the run up to the ministry formation had its twists and turns. Mukherjee had got a tongue lashing from Indira herself for contesting the election from Bolpur in West Bengal against her advice.

He had lost and Indira summoned him on the result day itself. Sanjay Gandhi warned him that Indira was upset at his defeat and he met her at her residence at 9 PM. Indira, who was suffering from a bad cold and soaking her feet in a tub of warm water in her dining, was fuming at Mukherjee for going against her advice not to contest. She told her that he nullified all his hard work.

Soon, there was speculation that Mukherjee would not be in her Cabinet with Bengali newspapers projecting Barkat from the state. Some of his supporters and admirers from Assam, Odisha, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and the north-east offered to lobby for him, which he declined.

Also Read: Pranab Mukherjee: A man of many misses

Two days before the swearing-in, Mukherjee wrote in 'The Dramatic Decade: The Indira Gandhi Years', the first of his three-part autobiography, Kamal Nath drove to his residence and told him about some likely inclusions in the Cabinet. Mukherjee thought there could be some truth in the information as Kamal Nath was close to Sanjay Gandhi.

Kamal Nath told him that he was trying to get Barkat a seat in Indira's team and then asked him whether he had spoken to the Gandhis about his inclusion. Mukherjee had a hunch that Kamal Nath was trying to read his mind and answered in the negative.

Same evening, Mukherjee went to Indira's residence where he first met Sanjay who told him that he was aware that the former was upset about the possibility of non-inclusion in the cabinet. Mukherjee told him that he was incorrectly informed and he felt embarrassed to approach Indira for a Cabinet berth after his defeat. Sanjay told him that it was already decided that he would be Commerce Minister but was not sure whether he would be sworn in the first lot. Only Indira knew.

He met Indira too that evening but she did not mention anything about his induction in the Cabinet. Instead, she asked him about certain individuals without citing any specific reason for her interest. She had also asked him to work out a scheme for the merger of Sikkim Chief Minister Nar Bahadur Bhandari.