For the first time in five decades, India is having a Lok Sabha election in which the Congress?s must trusted strategist and troubleshooter for years is not playing a part. Because President Pranab Mukherjee is now out of the hurly burly of active politics and missing it too, people close to him say.
His travels have been cut down because of elections and engagements, too, are at an ebb, Mukherjee is hooked to television news channels playing 24-hour election coverage but loathe the opinion polls. Repeated prodding from aides about his assessment of the possible poll outcome, the aides say, elicit no concrete response from the man who made it to Lok Sabha for the first time in 2004 but has been a key man in the Congress for almost all elections since his first entry into the Rajya Sabha in 1969 ? barring a brief period when he had formed his own political party the Rahstriya Samajwadi Congress in 1986 that merged with the Congress in 1989.
Mukherjee has recently appointed as legal adviser T K Viswanathan, former law secretary in the union government and former secretary-general of the Lok Sabha.
There are occasional political visitors, of course. Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh and MoS for HRD Shashi Tharoor met him over the last few days. Wednesday he had a meeting with MoS for External Affairs E Ahamed. But overall Mukherjee?s itinerary during the elections is a lot less full than usual. Keenly following election news, he has made no bones about how much he misses the action. When the Congress manifesto was released, he reportedly reminisced about his involvement in the exercise in 2009.
One man that he has talked about is senior BJP leader L K Advani ? incidentally the only political leader who turned out for the recent change of guard ceremony at Rahstrapati Bhavan. A group of intellectuals, including Justice Rajinder Sachar and journalists Kuldeep Nayyar and Syed Naqvi, recently visited the President and in course of the conversation told him that there was nobody left in Indian politics with his kind of insight or insider knowledge about the political scene. Showing shades of why he had been the Congress?s favourite troubleshooter, Mukherjee, it is learnt, immediately told them that there is only one man who can match his experience or knowledge of Indian politics and that was Advani, who, though elder to him in age, is actually younger inParliament.
Meanwhile, the President is set to resume his travels with a visit to Manipur on April 29 for a convocation.