The third volume of former President Pranab Mukherjee’s autobiography will hit the stands on Friday.
None from the ruling dispensation will be on the dais as the invite from the publisher states: “The Coalition Years: 1996-2012 will be released in the presence of Manmohan Singh, Sitaram Yechury, Rahul Gandhi, S Sudhakar Reddy, Akhilesh Yadav, Satish Chandra Mishra and M K Kanimozhi.”
A source said some leaders in the government were extended invites but they did not confirm their presence and had to be left out.
Mukherjee, before becoming the President in July 2012, served as a minister in the Manmohan Singh-Cabinet while Yechury was part of a number of efforts since 1996 when the coalition governments were formed.
Whether it is CPI (Reddy), Samajwadi Party (Akhilesh), Bahujan Samaj Party (Mishra) or DMK (Kanimozhi), all these parties played a significant role in the making and breaking of coalition governments since 1996.
The final volume of his autobiography, which comes three months after he demitted office, would deal with the experiments in coalition governments but would not touch his years in Rashtrapati Bhavan.
It will also have Mukherjee’s vivid recollections as the minister of defence, external affairs and finance from 2004 and details of a meeting with Henry Kissinger in 2004 that is said to have altered the course of the Indo–US strategic partnership.
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