The children of former President Pranab Mukherjee — Sharmistha and Abhijit Mukherjee — engaged in a Twitter spat on Tuesday over their father’s last book, ‘The Presidential Years’. The book excerpts, released last week, blame Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh for the Congress’s fall from power.

The showdown started with Abhijit’s tweet, tagging the publishers, urging that the publication of the book and the ‘motivated excerpts’ be stopped. “I , the Son of the author of the Memoir “The Presidential Memoirs” request you to kindly stop the publication of the memoir as well as motivated excerpts which is already floating in certain media platforms without my written consent,” the former MP and MLA tweeted. He later corrected the ‘The Presidential Memoirs’ to ‘The Presidential Years’.

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Abhijit, 60, sought an immediate stop to publication of the book saying, “Since my father is no more , I being his son want to go through the contents of the final copy of the book before it’s publication as I believe , had my father been alive today , he too would have done the same.”

This drew a quick response from Sharmistha,  55, who requested her brother “not to create any unnecessary hurdles”.

“I, daughter of the author of the memoir ‘The Presidential Years’, request my brother @ABHIJIT_LS  not to create any unnecessary hurdles in publication of the last book written by our father. He completed the manuscript before he fell sick. The final draft contains my dads’ hand written notes and comments that have been strictly adhered to. The views expressed by him are his own and no one should try to stop it from being published for any cheap publicity. That would be the greatest disservice to our departed father,” she wrote in two strong tweets.

The ‘Presidential Years’ is the last of the four-part memoirs that the late President had written covering more than five decades of his public and political life. The other three being –The Dramatic decade, The Coalition Years and The Turbulent Years.

The excerpts from the last of the four books — The Presidential Years — were released last week by publishers Rupa in which Pranab Mukherjee wrote, “Some members of the Congress have theorized that, had I become the PM in 2004, the party might have averted the 2014 Lok Sabha drubbing. Though I don’t subscribe to this view, I do believe that the party’s leadership lost political focus after my elevation as president. While Sonia Gandhi was unable to handle the affairs of the party, Dr (Manmohan) Singh’s prolonged absence from the House put an end to any personal contact with other MPs.”