Won’t join CPI ever again, says expelled comrade Somnath

Subhrangshu Gupta

Kolkata, August 2

Veteran communist leader Somnath Chatterjee finally did not agree. He informed his young comrades that he won’t return to the party, Communist Party of India (CPI), which he had served sincerely and seriously since his boyhood days.

Somnath was unceremoniously expelled for acting “independently” as the Lok Sabha Speaker during the trust motion against the erstwhile Manmohan Singh government in July 2008.

Somnath, a successful lawyer by profession, is the son of the renowned barrister Nirmal Chandra Chatterjee. He was not, however, a Marxist communist. He was a close friend of Dr Shyamaprasad Mookherjee and they jointly revolted against Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s “coterie” and formed a new “swatantra”( independent) party.

He was a communist leader and very close to Jyoti Basu as well as another party veteran, the late Shenangshu Kanto Acharya. When the party removed Somnath, Basu was alive but he was helpless and was under the mercy of the party leadership. He was sorry for Somnath’s fate but he could do nothing for him. And finally Somnath had to quit.

But he did not join any other party or formed any new party. At that time, Mamata Banerjee personally approached him and welcomed him to her TMC. But he declined.

The party is now in the doldrums, not only in Bengal but all over the country. At the last party congress, Sitaram Yechury was chosen as Karat’s successor and he came forward in rectifying their old mistake of throwing Somnath out from the party.

So long, Somnath had been in the dilemma of “to be or not be” with Yechuri’s offer of rejoining with the party. And at last he conveyed to Yechuri that he would not return at this age when he is not keeping good health. But he would remain a communist at heart till the end.