Is the “no love-lost relationship” between CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat and Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee-led Bengal lobby not over? It seems so as party central committee member and state housing minister Gautam Deb, going against the diktat of Mr Karat, has proposed expelled party leader Somnath Chatterjee to address a poll rally in his constituency Dum Dum on April 24.
Insiders revealed, the call of Mr Deb to the former Lok Sabha Speaker, contrary to party Red Book, has had the backing from party bigwigs like chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and state secretary Biman Bose. This has triggered a speculation in political circles that Mr Chatterjee will be back into the party fold soon.
Mr Deb who has been spearheading the CPI(M)’s odyssey of turnaround in the poll battle, claimed that expelled party leader Mr Chatterjee will participate in a poll rally in his constituency Dum Dum. “With Somnathda as the star speaker, it will be the last mega meeting of the Left Front in the constituency ahead of the polls,” Mr Deb said, adding that another stalwart Marxist Dr Ashoke Mitra (the former state finance minister) has also been invited to address the meeting.
Asked whether Mr Chatterjee can be taken back into the party, Mr Deb said there is no rule that a person once expelled cannot return to the party.
“No personality.... whatsoever can be greater than the party itself....” Mr Deb quipped in an obvious reference to the “high-handed” decision of Mr Karat to summarily expel Mr Chatterjee from the party fold. That was when Mr Chatterjee defied the party diktat to quit the Speaker’s office after the CPI(M) withdrew support to the Dr Manmohan Singh government over the Indo-US nuclear deal. This act of his defiance to Mr Karat’s diktat eventually turned to be his nemesis and he had to pay for it.
Political observers believed that the Alimuddin Street bosses, from Biman Bose to Nirupam Sen, leave aside Mr Chatterjee’s mentor Jyoti Basu, were not ready for an abrupt end to a 40-year long political association with Mr Chatterjee. Questions had also cropped up among party ranks as well. Party insiders are yet to reconcile with the process that turned a hero into a renegade within a day.
Mr Chatterjee who has been in a sort of political sanyas now, said: “For the last couple of days, Deb has been prodding me to address an election rally in his constituency Dum Dum. He wants me to go there on April 24. I have not taken any final decision. This is April 14. April 24 is days away. I have not given him my words yet.”