My exit from Congress during Rajiv Gandhi regime was a fiasco: President Pranab Mukherjee

NEW DELHI: The second part of President Pranab Mukherjee’s memoir, The Turbulent Years: 1980-1996, containing his narration of many significant chapters of Indian political history such as the Operation Blue Star, Indira Gandhi’s assassination, his exit from the Rajiv Gandhi government, the demolition of Babri Masjid, etc, was released on Thursday by Vice President Hamid Ansari.

Mukherjee has described how abrupt exit from Rajiv Cabinet and Congress party as a ‘fiasco’ he himself had created. "I have candidly recognised in the book that I should have not have ventured into this (forming a separate party) because I was never a mass leader and I did not have the type of following which rebels from Congress like Ajay Mukherjee in 1960s or recently Mamata and in one sense Indira ji herself had," the President said.

The book describes the opening of Ram Janmabhoomi temple doors as an "error of judgement" by Rajiv Gandhi and demolition of Babri Masjid during PV Narasimha Rao’s government an act of "absolute perfidy" that destroyed India’s image.