Did Pranab Mukherjee aspire to become interim PM after Indira Gandhi's assassination?

When it comes to Pranab Mukherjee, one incident that keeps recurring is his reported chat with Rajiv Gandhi on a flight from Kolkata to Delhi after Indira Gandhi's assassination.

It is widely speculated that Mukherjee told Rajiv that he should take over as interim Prime Minister as he was the senior most minister in Indira's Cabinet and created a rupture in the relationship between the two, leading to the former's ouster from Rajiv Cabinet and later from the party for a couple of years.

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However, in 2016, Mukherjee broke his silence to assert that he did not aspire to become the interim Prime Minister after Indira's assassination but such “false and spiteful” stories did create misgivings in Rajiv's mind that soured their relationship.

He held a coterie around Rajiv, which included Arun Nehru, Arun Singh and Vijay Dhar among others, for forcing him out of the Union Cabinet and later from Congress in 1986. According to Mukherjee, the coterie spread misinformation that he staked claim and had to be persuaded otherwise.

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Mukherjee felt both made mistakes and the latter allowed others to influence him while he let his frustration overtake his patience.

Recalling the flight back to Delhi from Kolkata, Mukherjee had said that Balram Jakhar, Ghani Khan Choudhury, Shyamlal Yadav, Uma Shankar Dikshit and Sheila Dikshit discussed the future course of action amongst themselves.

Mukherjee cited precedents that Gulzari Lal Nanda, the senior-most minister, became interim Prime Minister when Jawaharlal Nehru and Lal Bahadur Shastri died but pointed out that those were natural deaths.

However, he felt the 1984 situation was different as the incumbent Prime Minister was assassinated. The was a political void, with a lot of uncertainties created with it. The leaders on the flight then decided that Mukherjee should request Rajiv to take over as Prime Minister to “meet the challenge posed by this extraordinary” situation.

Mukherjee took Rajiv to the rear of the aircraft and requested him to take over as the Prime Minister. Rajiv asked him whether he would be able to manage, to which Mukherjee responded he would have everyone's support.

When they landed in Delhi, the then Cabinet Secretary Krishnaswamy Rao told Mukherjee that he would have to take over, as Nanda had done in the past, but he told the officer about their decision, according to Mukherjee's side of the contentious episode.

Mukherjee also had objected to a demand by a section, including Arun Nehru, that Rajiv should be sworn in by Vice President R Venkitaraman even before President Gyani Zail Singh reaches Delhi, fearing that he may put obstacles to their plan. The cause of concern was that the President had a running battle with Indira.

However, Mukherjee was against the idea, saying it was unconstitutional and would have sent a wrong political message.

Another point of irritant in his relationship with Rajiv was one of his newspaper interviews in which he said the government would continue the economic policies of the Indira government under Rajiv. The group against him had projected it as “presumptuous and unmindful” while ratcheting up the campaign that he was ignoring Rajiv as he did not accompany him during the election campaign