Sharmistha Mukherjee Slams Congress for Not Holding Condolence Meeting After Pranab Mukherjee’s Death

New Delhi, 28th December 2024: Sharmistha Mukherjee, daughter of former President Pranab Mukherjee, has criticized the Congress party for not calling a Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting after her father’s passing. In a statement on X, she highlighted that despite her father’s death in August 2020, the party leadership did not arrange a condolence meeting. She also accused the leadership of misleading her, recalling a senior leader’s claim that such meetings weren’t held for Presidents, which she dismissed as false after finding evidence in her father’s diaries that a similar meeting was held after KR Narayanan’s death.

While she criticized the Congress’s handling of her father’s passing, Sharmistha expressed support for the party’s call for a memorial for Dr. Manmohan Singh, who passed away on Thursday at the age of 92. She stated that he deserved the honour, including the Bharat Ratna, which her father had intended to confer on Singh but was not awarded, possibly for reasons that remain unclear.

Dr. Manmohan Singh, the former Prime Minister of India, passed away in New Delhi after being admitted to AIIMS. He was in office from 2004 to 2014 and retired from the Rajya Sabha in April 2024. Widely recognized as a key architect of India’s economic reforms in the 1990s, he served as the finance minister in the government of Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao.