Pranab Mukherjee's son to contest WB polls

Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee's son Abhijit Mukherjee on Monday quit his job from Steel Authority of India Limited to join politics and contest the upcoming West Bengal assembly elections.

Sources in Congress party said the SAIL board has accepted Abhijit's resignation and he would be released in a couple of days.

The 48-year-old Abhijit was working as General Manager (Corporate Social Responsibility) in SAIL's corporate office in New Delhi.

Abhijit is most likely to contest on a Congress ticket from Nalhati seat in the family's ancestral district of Birbhum.

Words were doing the rounds that Abhijit will follow his father's path of joining politics after he was seen actively participating in public programmes in Birbhum district, party sources said.

He will start poll campaign on Thursday, they said. Left Front ally Forward Bloc won Nalhati seat in the last assembly polls in 2006.

The Congress has done well in panchayat and Lok Sabha elections.