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NEW DELHI: Abhijit Mukherjee, son of former president Pranab Mukherjee, on Monday responded to his sister Sharmistha Mukherjee’s Congress Party’s complaint that restrictions due to the Covid-19 pandemic prevented protests, adding a planned rally across the Congress, at the time of his father’s death in August 2020.
“When my father died, it was the time of Covid. There were many restrictions, so people could not gather. Kejriwal’s administration did not allow any family member to meet him. Only 20 people from family and friends were present. Congress also wanted to hold a rally but could not do so. However, PM and Rahul Gandhi came,” he told news agency PTI.
Sharmistha Mukherjee cited Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge’s proposal to build a memorial for former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in Delhi and said that when his father died, the Congress committee in charge held a condolence meeting.
In a post on X, she said, “A senior Congress leader told me there is no tradition of calling a condolence meeting for former Presidents of India. This argument is completely baseless. I learned from my father’s diaries that the CWC held a condolence meeting on the demise of former President K.R. Narayanan, and my father himself drafted the condolence message.”
He also referred to comments by former Congress leader C. R. Kesavan, who criticized the party for neglecting leaders who were part of the Gandhi family. He said Congress had built a monument in Delhi for former PV Prime Minister Narasimha Rao.