Somnath Chatterjee’s family rebuffs CPI(M) request

  • | Tuesday | 14th August, 2018

In fact, a number of CPI(M) leaders reached the private hospital where Somnath Chatterjee passed away at 8.15 a.m. Police personnel pay tribute to former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee during his funeral at the West Bengal State Assembly in Kolkata on August 13, 2018. The late CPI(M) veteran’s son Pratap Chatterjee, a lawyer, shouted when he spotted Mr. Basu at his south Kolkata home: “What is this man doing here! Please ask this man (Mr. Basu) to leave,” he said. I saw tears rolling down his eyes,” Ms. Basu told journalists.

Police personnel pay tribute to former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee during his funeral at the West Bengal State Assembly in Kolkata on August 13, 2018. | Photo Credit: PTI more-in Left Front chairperson Biman Basu was shown the door when he went to the home of veteran Parliamentarian and former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, who passed away this morning, to pay his last respects. Mr. Chatterjee’s family, which has been extremely upset over his expulsion from the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in 2008 and his eventual “mistreatment”, not only asked Mr. Basu to leave but also refused to have his body draped in the red flag and taken to the party’s Kolkata headquarters. The late CPI(M) veteran’s son Pratap Chatterjee, a lawyer, shouted when he spotted Mr. Basu at his south Kolkata home: “What is this man doing here! They have sucked my father’s blood for years and now they have come to show sympathy?” Minutes later, when the senior CPI(M) leader accompanied party general secretary Sitaram Yechury, the son flared up again. “Why have you come here again? Please ask this man (Mr. Basu) to leave,” he said. Later, Pratap Chatterjee explained to journalists why he had asked the Left Front Chairperson to leave. “He had insulted and said bad things about my father after his expulsion,” he said. Earlier in the day, the veteran Parliamentarian’s daughter, Anushila, narrated at length how Mr. Chatterjee had reacted upon hearing about his expulsion from the party, which he had joined just four years after its formation in 1968. This 2014 file photo shows former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee with his daughter Anushila Basu on his 85th birthday at his residence in Kolkata. | Photo Credit: PTI “He was sitting in his ante-chamber. I entered the room and told him [about the expulsion]. I told him, ‘You now are a free bird.’ He asked me if he had been suspended. I told him he was expelled. I saw tears rolling down his eyes,” Ms. Basu told journalists. She said the family was not keen on taking her father’s body to the party headquarters on Alimuddin Street. State Secretary of CPI(M) Surjya Kanta Mishra said that Somnath Chatterjee was “above the party” and hinted that they were in talks with the family on bringing the body to the party office. In fact, a number of CPI(M) leaders reached the private hospital where Somnath Chatterjee passed away at 8.15 a.m. But later in the evening, when efforts by the party turned out to be futile, Dr. Mishra said the issue was not a “party matter but that of the family”.

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