Language barrier

Now that Pranab Mukherjee is most likely to go to Rashtrapati Bhavan, this story can be told. Mukherjee and former Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao were not the best of friends, although Mukherjee was deputy chairman, Planning Commission when Rao was PM as well as commerce minister. But he had returned to the Congress after a long spell of being out of it. So, once a group of jealous senior leaders gave Rao a long deposition to the effect that he should immediately make Mukherjee the governor of Uttar Pradesh, which would more or less have ended the Bengal leader’s political career. Rao heard them with patience. Then he gave his verdict: “Already, most of our voters have fled to Mulayam Singh Yadav. If Pranab becomes the governor, hearing his Hindi accent, the rest will also run away.”