Pranab Mukherjee’s son Abhijit Mukherjee joins Trinamool Congress

Tribune News Service
Kolkata, July 5

Abhijit Mukherjee, former Congress MP and son of late President Pranab Mukherjee, on Monday joined West Bengal’s ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) in a low-key function at the party headquarters “Trinamool Bhavan” here.

Abhijit was welcomed by Sudip Bandyopadhyay, TMC leader in the Lok Sabha, and Partha Chatterjee, secretary general of the TMC in Bengal.

The Mukherjee scion twice remained member of the Lok Sabha from Jangipur before being relegated to the third position in the 2019 LS poll. Abhijit (61) first became an MP from Jangipur on the Congress ticket in 2012 after his father Pranab Mukherjee, sitting MP, resigned from the Lok Sabha midway through his term to take up the post of President.

In the General Election held two years later, Abhijit secured a modest victory. Abhijit lost to TMC’s Khalilur Rahaman and was relegated to the third position at Jangipur in the last LS poll held in 2019.

Abhijit said having handed out a massive defeat to the BJP, CM Mamata Banerjee was in course to emerge as the face of the anti-BJP political forces. “The way she halted the recent communal wave by the BJP, I believe in the future, with the support of others, she will be able to do the same in the entire country,” he added.

Abhijit said he was not a legislator, nor was an office-bearer of the Congress. He was only a primary member of the Congress and that membership lapsed in three years in the normal course unless renewed again.

On his sister Sharmistha Mukherjee’s continued association with the Congress, Abhijit said she was free to chart her own political course.