NEW DELHI - Pranab Mukherjee, India's former finance minister who introduced a controversial tax rule that alarmed investors, and who later rose to become the nation's president, has died. He was 84.
Mukherjee, often called Pranab-da - a suffix added to a name to denote elder brother in Bengali, was born in Mirati village on Dec 11, 1935 under the then Bengal Presidency in British India. He earned a degree in law, and also pursued a master's degree in history as well as one in political science. He was a teacher and a journalist before entering politics.
His leadership of steering India's economy in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis is well acclaimed, but he will be most remembered for his tax move in 2012 as finance minister. Mukherjee introduced a retrospective tax after the nation's income tax office lost a case demanding Vodafone Group Plc pay capital gains levies for its 2007 acquisition of the then Hutchison Whampoa Ltd's Indian operations, spooking global investors.