Did Pranab Mukherjee want Manmohan's chair? Sonia Gandhi recalls a 2010 remark

Sonia Gandhi's memoir recounts Pranab Mukherjee hinting in 2010 that he wanted a change at the top. The account also rebuts claims that she wielded unofficial power over Manmohan Singh's UPA government.In her memoir, Sonia Gandhi has mentioned a 2010 conversation with Pranab Mukherjee over his desire to become PM.New Delhi,Nov 10, 2026 11:53 ISTCongress leader Pranab Mukherjee hinted at his long-held desire to become prime minister during a conversation with then Congress president Sonia Gandhi in 2010, according to her memoir, news agency Press Trust of India reported. Gandhi writes that Mukherjee surprised her by suggesting that it might be time for “a change at the top”.In the memoir, “Belonging: A Journey of Love”, Gandhi also rejects allegations that she was the “back-seat driver” of the United Progressive Alliance government. She says Manmohan Singh was the prime minister and that, as Congress president, she could offer opinions or suggestions and express differences, but it was her duty to defer to him.“Further, I was determined not to be, under any circumstances, the cause of a misunderstanding that could give our opponents occasion to rejoice and weaken our government,” she says in the 526-page book, which was released on Tuesday.The book begins with an inscription from the Rig Veda: “Move together, speak together, let your minds be in concord. United be your purpose, harmonious be your heart, collected be your thoughts, so that you dwell in togetherness, in wholeness.” According to Gandhi, there was an “unspoken division of responsibility” between Singh and her that worked smoothly — “the government under Dr Manmohan Singh, and the party under me."She writes that a core group meets the prime minister every week to ensure coordination between the party and the government. Its members included Mukherjee, Arjun Singh, AK Antony and Ahmed Patel. They also met regularly as part of a strategy group set up to discuss issues to be raised in Parliament. “Sometimes Pranab ji, as I always called him, would stay back for a chat,” Gandhi writes.Mukherjee had developed serious differences with then finance minister P Chidambaram, Gandhi says. “On one occasion, in 2010, I think after expressing his frustration, he shocked me with the suggestion that perhaps it was time for a change at the top, which I understood as a hint of his long-held desire to become prime minister,” she writes.“I gently changed the subject, and though he may have been disappointed, he never made me feel he held it against me,” she adds.Gandhi notes that the Congress nominated Mukherjee as the UPA’s presidential candidate in 2012 and that he was elected to the country’s highest office. “I often called on him, mostly just to converse with the erudite and knowledgeable politician that he always remained,” she writes.Addressing allegations that she wielded real power during the UPA years, when Singh was prime minister from 2004 to 2014, Gandhi writes about a “rash of stories” in the media, some of which she says were fed by people around the prime minister.“A decade later, a book was published by one of his former aides, reaffirming the malicious and totally false allegations spread all along by my opponents: that I sent for files from the prime minister’s office, interfered with administrative matters, and made key appointments,” she writes, according to PTI.Gandhi says the allegation that distressed her most was that she had examined official files despite being outside the government. “I had always been particular about adhering to rules, all the more so during this period,” she writes, adding that the Prime Minister’s Office issued a statement categorically denying that official files had ever been shown to her.She also cites comments by Singh’s daughter, Upinder Singh, who described the former aide’s book as “nothing but a stab in the back... a huge betrayal of trust” and “a mischievous, unethical exercise." Upinder Singh said her father’s relationship with Gandhi was based on “mutual trust and respect”.“However, the opposition and the media looked for every opportunity to spin the narrative that I was the government’s ‘back-seat driver’,” Gandhi writes.- Ends