‘Pranab was upset with Rajiv over Babri move’

Former President Pranab Mukherjee was deeply upset with Rajiv Gandhi for allowing the locks of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya to be opened in 1986. He believed it would dent the Congress image and set a bad precedent of intermixing religion and politics. Mukherjee’s daughter, Sharmistha, revealed that her father was upset with Rajiv Gandhi for ignoring the letter written by former UP chief minister Kamlapati Tripathi advising against opening the locks. He called the mosque’s demolition a ‘dastardly act’ that would hurt Congress in the Hindi belt.