In
1969, Mukherjee got his break in politics thanks to Prime Minister Indira
Gandhi, who helped him get elected to the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of
India's Parliament, on a Congress ticket. Following a meteoric rise in the
early phase of his career, he became one of Indira's most trusted lieutenants,
and a minister in her cabinet in 1973. Mukherjee's service in a number of
ministerial capacities culminated in his first stint as Finance Minister in
1982–84. Mukherjee was Leader of the House in the Rajya Sabha from 1980 to
1985.
Mukherjee
was sidelined from the Congress during the Prime Ministership of Rajiv Gandhi,
Indira's son. 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 the Congress in 1989 after reaching a
compromise with Rajiv Gandhi. Mukherjee's political career revived when Prime
Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao appointed him Planning Commission head in 1991 and
Foreign Minister in 1995. Following this, as elder statesman of the Congress,
Mukherjee was the principal architect of Sonia Gandhi's (Rajiv's widow) entry
into politics in the late 1990s.
When
the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) came into power in 2004,
Mukherjee, never a mass leader, won a Lok Sabha (lower house of Parliament)
seat for the first time. From then until his resignation in 2012, Mukherjee was
number-two in Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government. He held a number of
key cabinet portfolios—Defence (2004–06), External Affairs (2006–09) and
Finance (2009–12)—apart from heading several Groups of Ministers (GoMs) and
being Leader of House in the Lok Sabha. After securing the UPA's nomination for
the country's Presidency, Mukherjee easily bested P. A. Sangma in the race to
Rashtrapati Bhavan, winning 70 percent of the vote.
From : www.wikipedia.org
