It’s official now! Expelled party leader Somnath Chatterjee is not an “untouchable” to the Marxist Party. CPI(M) state secretary and party politburo member Biman Bose on Sunday made it clear that state housing minister Gautam Deb’s call to the former Lok Sabha Speaker to address a rally was very much in sync with the party line.
In what seems to be endorsing Mr Deb’s invite to Mr Chatterjee to address an election rally at Dum Dum, Mr Bose said that the “party would not create a barrier if someone likes to participate in poll rallies”. “Former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, who had been expelled from the party, was free to campaign for the Left Front candidates,” Mr Bose said, adding that the party will not create a barrier if someone takes a “suo moto” decision to campaign for the Left Front candidates.
When reminded that the state housing minister had said that he had invited Mr Chatterjee to campaign for him and thus it could not be termed as a “suo moto” decision, Mr Bose parried the point, retorting, “Now everybody (the media) is harping on Somnath Chatterjee.”
Asked about CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat’s reported remark that “he had defected to the ruling class” and summarily expelled him when Mr Chatterjee defied the party diktat to quit the Speaker’s office after the CPI(M) withdrew support to the Manmohan Singh-government over the India-US nuclear deal, a livid Mr Bose quipped, “This was an irony that when he was expelled from the party, everybody wrote against us. Now when he decided to campaign, the media is parroting a different tune.”