Reminiscence: When Kaka held a press conference at Congress headquarter in the presence of Pranav Mukherjee n Margaret Alva in 1991

20th November

This is historic picture for me. However, it may be irrelevant for others. What’s interesting in this picture is Pranav Da, our honourable ex president was then the union minister of Finance in Prime minister Narsimha Rao’s cabinet. Kaka was then contesting from New Delhi as the Congress candidate against the then BJP stalwart L. K. Advani. This was an extremely prestigious election with entire media, national n international focussed in this constituency, he being the first n original super star of India n contest being with a BJP stalwart. The entire cabinet n party was behind Kaka to ensure his victory. Kaka being the Bollywood superstar n a new entrant in election politics was the centre of attraction in Delhi , amongst his myriad die hard fans and New Delhi electorates. The contest was very keen and hectic between a bollywood super star n a super star of BJP viz Kaka n Advani. Kaka had lost this election by merely 1500 votes to finally win, defeating BJP’ s Bollywood candidate Shatrughan Sinha as Advani preferred to shift to Gandhi Nagar seat which he had won simultaneously. Advani has contested from two seats at a time, one from New Delhi n other from Gandhi Nagar and had stood victorious from both the parliamentary consultancies. I was then Kaka’s media advisor, acompanying him constantly during the constituency campaign . Here in the picture, superstar Rajesh Khanna clad in white Kurta Pyjama is seen with the then union ministers Pranav Mukerjee and Margaret Alva. I m standing just behind Kaka. The venue was AICC headquarter 24 Akbar Road, New Delhi. The memory is still refreshing. This is the picture clicked while Rajesh Khanna aka Kaka was adressing the press conference revealing about his plans to approach the court to seek justice for recounting of votes as his plea for recpuntung was not heard. However, Advaniji preferred Gandhi Nagar probably thinking to avoid the future mess of getting unnecessarily involved in court case wranglings in case Kaka really approaches the court thus paving way for the reelection n the superstar finally winning from New Delhi against Shatrughan Sinha who gave a good fight in the political electoral battle between two stars of the same fraternity.