Pranab Mukherjee bats for Rahul Gandhi as future PM

Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee believes Congress leader Rahul Gandhi is the future Prime Minister of India.

Always considered number two in the Congress Government since the days of slain Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, Mukherjee said Rahul was a “popular leader” and had strong potential to become Prime Minister.

75-year-old Mukherjee, a political stalwart who first entered Parliament four decades ago and has been a member of almost every Congress Ministry at the Centre since1973, hinted that he was looking for political sanyas at the end of his current term in the Lok Sabha, India Today said.

Mukherjee, who said he was unlikely to join a new cabinet, spoke of retirement at a time when the country was trying to balance policies toward double-digit growth, battling with high inflation and poverty.

“My goodness! What would be my age? I am already 75. There is a limit beyond which you can not go,” Mukherjee told India Today magazine when asked if he would join a Rahul Gandhi cabinet.

“How long do you expect me to stay? Rather, I have overstayed my wicket,” he said.

“The crowds he gets are amazing,” he said about Rahul Gandhi, son of Congress chief Sonia and heir to the Nehru-Gandhi family which has given India three Prime Ministers.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the Congress party were re-elected last year, but the coalition United Progressive Alliance Government at the Centre has been criticised for slow decision-making and there have been calls for younger and fresher politicians being inducted into his elderly cabinet.

A master of India’s turbulent politics, Mukherjee is considered by many as the sharpest mind in Singh’s cabinet with deep knowledge of the changing dynamics of the country’s strategic and economic policies.

Mukherjee is much more than just the Finance Minister.

He is the Congress party’s foremost trouble-shooter, often rising in Parliament to defend the Government on issues as diverse as foreign policy and inflation.