Opening moves

Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee is extremely pleased with the election result of his son, Avijit. The junior Mukherjee, who quit a plum job at SAIL to enter electoral politics, has won from Nalhati in West Bengal’s Birbhum district with a margin of over 15,000 votes. At the same time, the Finance Minister is said to have joked his son will now taunt him. “My father had won in his first election, and so did my son. I couldn’t win my first two elections. I fear my son will now say — ‘look my grandfather and I made records where you failed’.” It is also an irony in the Mukherjee family that Avijit’s debut contest was from Birbhum district where Mukherjee, too, had contested in the 70s.