Pranab Mukherjee

He had two siblings: older sister Annapurna Banarjee (1928–2020) and older brother Piyush Mukherjee (1931–2017).

Mukherjee attended Suri Vidyasagar College in Suri (Birbhum), which was then affiliated to the University of Calcutta.

He subsequently earned an MA degree in political science and history and an LL.B. degree, both from the University of Calcutta

He was an upper-division Clerk in the Office of the Deputy Accountant-General (Post and Telegraph) in Calcutta.

Pranab Mukherjee (11 December 1935 – 31 August 2020) was an Indian politician who served as the 13th president of India from 2012 until 2017.

He was the first person from West Bengal to hold the post of President of India.

In a political career spanning five decades, Mukherjee was a senior leader in the Indian National Congress and occupied several ministerial portfolios in the Government of India.

Pranab Mukherjee was born on 11 December 1935 during the British Colonial rule, into a Bengali Brahmin family in Mirati, a village in the Bengal Presidency (now in Birbhum district, West Bengal).

His father, Kamada Kinkar Mukherjee, was active participant in the Indian independence movement and was a member of the West Bengal Legislative Council between 1952 and 1964 as a representative of the Indian National Congress; he was also a member of AICC.

His mother was Rajlakshmi Mukherjee.

In 1963, he became a lecturer (Assistant Professor) of Political Science at Vidyanagar College, Kolkata, affiliated to the University of Calcutta and he also worked as a journalist at Desher Dak (Call of the Motherland) before entering politics.

Mukherjee started his political career in 1967 as a founding member of the Bangla Congress.

Ahead of the 1967 election, he played a crucial role in forging the United Front alliance against the Indian National Congress.

Mukherjee got his break in politics in 1969 when the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi helped him get elected to the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of Parliament of India, on a Congress ticket.

In 1969, he managed the successful Midnapore by-election campaign of an independent candidate, V. K. Krishna Menon.

He became a member of the Rajya Sabha (the upper house of Indian parliament) in July 1969 on a Bangla Congress ticket.

Mukherjee soon became the medium of exchanging confidential notes between Indira Gandhi and Ajoy Mukherjee.

In 1972, Indira Gandhi recruited him to the Indian National Congress along with merging the Bangla Congress into the party.

Following a meteoric rise, he became one of Gandhi's most trusted lieutenants and a minister in her cabinet in 1973.

Mukherjee's rise was rapid in the early phase of his career and he was appointed Union Deputy Minister of Industrial Development in Indira Gandhi's cabinet in 1973.

Mukherjee was re-elected to the house in 1975, 1981, 1993, and 1999.

He became a Gandhi loyalist and was often described as her "man for all seasons."

He was active in the Indian cabinet during the controversial Internal Emergency of 1975–77.

He was also the Leader of the House in the Rajya Sabha from 1980 to 1985.

Mukherjee was sidelined from Congress during the premiership of Rajiv Gandhi.

Mukherjee's service in a number of ministerial capacities culminated in his first stint as Finance Minister of India in 1982–84.

Mukherjee had viewed himself and not the inexperienced Rajiv, as the rightful successor to Indira following her assassination in 1984.

Mukherjee lost out in the ensuing power struggle.

He formed his own party, the Rashtriya Samajwadi Congress, which merged with Congress in 1989 after reaching a consensus with Rajiv Gandhi.

After Rajiv Gandhi's assassination in 1991, Mukherjee's political career was revived when Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao appointed him Planning Commission head in 1991 and foreign minister in 1995.

Following this, as an elder statesman of Congress, Mukherjee was the principal architect of Sonia Gandhi's ascent to the party's presidency in 1998.

When the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) came to power in 2004, Mukherjee won a Lok Sabha (the popularly elected lower house of Parliament) seat for the first time.

Prior to his election as President, Mukherjee was Finance Minister from 2009 to 2012.

From then until his resignation in 2012, he held a number of key cabinet portfolios in Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government – Defence (2004–06), External Affairs (2006–09), and Finance (2009–12) – apart from heading several Groups of Ministers (GoMs) and being Leader of the House in the Lok Sabha.

After securing the UPA's nomination for the country's presidency in July 2012, Mukherjee comfortably defeated P. A. Sangma of NDA in the 2012 Indian presidential election, winning 70 per cent of the electoral-college vote.

In 2017, Mukherjee decided not to run for re-election and to retire from politics after leaving the presidency due to "health complications relating to old age."

His term expired on 25 July 2017.

He was succeeded as president by Ram Nath Kovind.

In June 2018, Mukherjee became the first former President of India to address a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) event.

He was awarded India's highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna, in 2019, by his successor as president, Ram Nath Kovind.