He has been an active President but Pranab Mukherjee still remains a copybook Head of State who would go by the Constitution and not venture beyond.
As he completes one year in office this week, Mukherjee, a stickler for rules and conventions in his heydays as parliamentarian or minister, used occasions, whenever he got, to impress upon the lawmakers to shed disruptions in the House while asking the judiciary to avoid overreach.
He was seen as proactive when he disposed of the mercy petitions of 26/11 attack convict Ajmal Kasab and Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru that had triggered a controversy but his aides explain that as President he had no choice but to go by the Cabinet advice.
Interaction with people comes naturally to Mukherjee, who has been in active public life for over four decades and this has not changed during his first year as the Head of the State, an office known for maintaining strict protocol.
Be it reaching out to the cheering crowd or interacting with the best brains of the country during discussions in educational institutions, Mukherjee enjoys every bit of his interactions with people.
During the last one year as the President of the country of over one billion people, Mukherjee had travelled to 23 states which includes five states of northeast during which he visited 36 educational institutions.
Shunning the ceremonial pomp, Mukherjee makes it a point to have an informal discussion with teachers and students whenever he is visiting an educational institute to know their point of view and convey to them his ideas.
He has dropped the use of honorific "His Excellency" while being addressed and removed strict protocol and security restrictions for Rashtrapati Bhavan events as well as participants.
