Pranab Mukherjee

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources.
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. (help, get involved!)
This article has been tagged since February 2007.

**Pranab Mukherjee**

Born	11 December 1935 Birbhum, West Bengal
Residence	Kolkata
Office	MP
Constituency	Jangipur
Political party	INC
Spouse	Suvra Mukherjee
Children	2 sons and 1 daughter
As of September 17, 2006 Source: [1]

Pranab Kumar Mukherjee (born December 11, 1935, West Bengal, India) is the Foreign Minister of India in the Manmohan Singh government. He is from the Indian National Congress. He has a degree in law from the University of Calcutta. He also holds Masters degree in both History and Political Science. He also holds an honorary D. Litt.

[edit] Career

He first became a minister in 1973, when he was sworn in as the Union Deputy Minister, Industrial Development. He served as the Finance Minister of India between 1982 and 1984, and President of West Bengal state unit of Congress in 1985. He served as foreign minister for the first time from 1995 to 1996. In 1997 he won the Outstanding Parliamentarian Award. Pranab Mukherjee belongs to the category of Congress party members who are popular with the Congress party president Sonia Gandhi, but do not enjoy a similar level of respect within the party's cadre. His closeness to Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh helped him gain the prestigious position of Defence Minister of India when the party came to power in 2004. Interestingly, this was the first time in this three-decade long political career that he was popularly elected to office.

On 24 October 2006, he was appointed as the External Affairs Minister of India. His replacement in the Defence Ministry is A.K. Antony, a senior Congress Party politician and former Chief Minister of the southern state of Kerala. According to a recent BBC article, he was described as having a reputation as a number-crunching politician with a phenomenal memory and an unerring survival instinct.

He has also held the position of Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission from 1991 to 1996.

He was conferred the Best Parliamentarian Award in 1997.

Pranab Mukherjee (left) with Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh

[edit] Personal life

He married Suvra Mukherjee on July 13, 1957 and has two sons and a daughter.

[edit] External links

Preceded by Dinesh Singh	Minister for External Affairs of India 1995–1996	Succeeded by Sikander Bakht
Preceded by Manmohan Singh	Minister for External Affairs of India 2006 -	Succeeded by Incumbent