Team News Riveting
New Delhi, December 15
Former President Pranab Mukherjee’s son Abhijit and daughter Sharmishtha have locked horns over the publication of his last memoir slated for release next month.
While son Abhijit Mukherjee had written a letter to the publishers to stop the publication of memoir without his written consent, Sharmishtha Mukherjee, who is also Congress spokesperson, had urged her brother “not to create any unnecessary hurdles in the publication of the last book written by our father.”
She has also said the views expressed by Pranab Mukherjee are his own and “no one should try to stop it from being published for any cheap publicity”. “That would be the greatest disservice to our departed father,” she said.
The spat between the brother and sister went viral over Twitter.
The excerpt from the memoir ‘The Presidential Years’ had been released by Rupa Publications last week and was widely reported in the media. Pranab Mukherjee, who was president from 2012 to 2017, had died in August this year. The publication had said that the memoir will be released in coming January.
The memoirs reportedly carry Pranab Mukherjee’s views on the party’s drubbing in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections and had critical views on the handling of the Congress party and the government by Sonia Gandhi and former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
Abhijit Mukherjee, a former Congress MP, made a series of tweets and termed the excerpts as “motivated” and asked the publisher to stop its publication of the memoir.
“I, the son of the author of the Memoir ‘The Presidential Memoirs’ request you to kindly stop the publication of the memoir as well as motivated excerpts which is already floating in certain media platforms without my written consent,” he said.
Abhijit said he wants to go through the final copy of the book before its publication and said his father would have done the same.
