40 years ago April 28, 1986: Pranab Mukherjee expelled
2 min readApr 28, 2026 06:40 AM IST
First published on: Apr 28, 2026 at 06:40 AM IST
The Congress (I) President, Rajiv Gandhi, expelled Pranab Mukherjee from the party for six years and suspended A P Sharma, Sripati Mishra and Prakash Mehrotra in an apparently desperate move to check growing dissidence. Gandhi, while cracking the whip on these known critics of the leadership of the party and the government, significantly continued his efforts to mollify the 82-year-old working president, Kamlapati Tripathi.
Ghani Khan on Pranab ouster
The Union Minister for Programme Implementation, A B A Ghani Khan Choudhury, welcomed Pranab Mukherjee’s expulsion as the right decision by the Congress (I) leadership. He also welcomed the decision of the party president in taking disciplinary action against those indulging in anti-party activities.
Chaos continues in Punjab
A man working in the fields suffered gun-shot injuries and a petrol pump was looted by some miscreants after they had snatched a scooter at pistol-point in Jalandhar district even as the police arrested nine suspected terrorists in the past 24 hours, reports received in Chandigarh said. The Faridkot district police arrested five suspected terrorists. Two of the seven who managed to escape were arrested, a police spokesman said. Three country-made pistols and some live cartridges were seized from the nine who were allegedly involved in shooting and looting incidents, a spokesman said.
J&K floods
While the Jhelum river continued to be in spate for the fourth day, efforts were being made to plug breaches. Three more bodies were recorded in Doda district, raising the death toll in the floods in Jammu and Kashmir to 11. Houseboats, doongas and shikaras on the Dal Lake and the Jhelum are touching the Amira Kadal bridge level and many low-lying areas in the city have been inundated. The authorities have organised relief measures and have brought hundreds of pump-sets to dewater flooded areas.
