Kolkata: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has invited President Pranab Mukherjee to undertake his first visit as President to his home state West Bengal.
Banerjee who flew down to New Delhi Tuesday night on a special plane arranged by Mukherjee to attend his swearing-in ceremony, meet Mukherjee at his residence after almost eight months.
“Both the leaders have forgotten the past and have moved on. They had known each other for a long time; whatever acrimony happened between them was primarily because of difference of opinion on providing their best for Bengal. There was no personal difference,” said Railway Minister Mukul Roy.
In West Bengal there were celebrations all around as Mukherjee took oath of office as the 13th President of India. State Congress leaders distributed sweets and large screens were set up for the people to see the first Bengali take over the highest office in the country.
As ‘Poltu’ (Mukherjee’s nick name), the simple village boy who walked three kilometres to attend a tin shade school became the President of India, his village Mirati came together to share the rare moment. It was a moment they had all waited for to make Kirnahar’s tryst with history complete, to believe that it is possible to dream big, that fairy tales sometimes do come true
Drums rolled and the men danced. Pride was written on everyone’s face. Mirati is now the village that gave India its first Bengali President. For the people of his village, it’s a fairy tale story of a simple village boy becoming the first Bengali President of the country.
For Pranab’s 83-year-old elder sister, Annapurna Devi, who was glued to the television set as her younger brother now President of the Republic of India gave his first speech to the nation. She knew it was a moment that would come 44 years ago.
Mukherjee’s politician son Abhijit said on Wednesday that he would like to step into his father’s shoes as Lok Sabha MP from West Bengal’s Jangipur constituency.
“I would like to inherit his political legacy, but it is like the ‘go-no go’ kind of a situation. It is for my party to decide if I should contest from Jangipur constituency that my father vacates on becoming the president,” Abhijit, a legislator in the West Bengal assembly, told IANS soon after his father took oath of office.
“If my party says go and contest from Jangipur, I will. If it does not, then obviously I will not. I am a member of the West Bengal Assembly now and got elected only about a year ago. I have four more years to go as MLA,” Abijit said, when IANS caught up with him outside Parliament House after the oath-taking ceremony.
Discussing his father’s long innings in politics, he said: “I want everybody to remember him for all the good things he has done in his public life. “Even if I achieve 30 per cent of what he achieved in his political career, it will be great,” said Abhijit, 52, an engineer by qualification. He was a Steel Authority employee before joining politics.
