SSC CGL DEST Previous Year – Pranab Kumar Mukherjee

Pranab Kumar Mukherjee was born on 11 December 1935. He served as the 13th President of India from July 2012. In a political career spanning six decades, Mukherjee was a senior leader of the Indian National Congress and occupied several ministerial portfolios in the Government of India. Prior to his election as President, Mukherjee was Union Finance Minister from 2009 to 2012, and the Congress party's top trouble shooter. Mukherjee got his break in politics in 1969 when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi helped him get elected to the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of Parliament, on a Congress ticket. Following a meteoric rise, he became one of Indira Gandhi's most trusted lieutenants, and a minister in her cabinet by 1973. During the controversial Internal Emergency of 1975-77, he was accused of committing gross excesses. Mukherjee was sidelined from the Congress during the premiership of Rajiv Gandhi. Mukherjee had viewed himself as the right successor to Indira following her assassination in 1984. Mukherjee lost out in the ensuing power struggle. He formed his own party, the Rashtriya Samajwadi Congress, which merged with the Congress in 1989. Mukherjee's political career revived when Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao appointed him Planning Commission head in 1991 and foreign minister in 1995. Mukherjee was the principal architect of Sonia Gandhi's ascension to the party's presidency in 1998. He was conferred the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian honour, in 2019.