Sixty-five-year-old Pranab Mukherjee is resigning not only from the government as the finance minister but also from the Congress to enter the presidential poll as an "independent" and not as a candidate of the Congress or the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA).

A Special Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting has been convened on Monday to accord him a farewell as he is resigning from the primary membership of the party. Party sources said he met Sonia Gandhi, requesting her to allow him to resign from the party as he does not want anyone to say "a Congress man is the president."

A special CWC meeting was also convened on June 21, 2007 on the eve of the presidential election, but it was not for any farewell but for Sonia Gandhi herself introducing Pratibha Patil as she was an unknown face for many. Important party leaders and the chief ministers of the Congress-ruled states and some prominent people were invited to that CWC meeting. One such prominent person was Anna Hazare.

During the visit to his ancestral home in Miriti village of Birbhum district on Saturday, Mukherjee was quite frank with the Congress workers coming to greet him that "I am no longer a Congress man." It was in Mitiri that he broke the news that he will also quit the CWC as he is contesting for the presidential election.

"I will have to raise myself above politics as I am contesting the presidential polls," an agency quoted Mukherjee telling the party workers who organised functions at several points from Kolkata to his village.