Chatterjee

New Delhi, July 9: Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee will step down in the coming days, CPM sources said today.

Once he resigns, Chatterjee, whose name figures on the list of 60 MPs furnished by the Left to the President today while informing her of the decision to withdraw support to the UPA, will be there as a CPM parliamentarian to vote against a confidence motion expected to be moved by the government, the sources added.

Asked about the propriety of including the Speaker’s name in the list while he is still holding the office, a CPM leader said: “He is a Left MP. He won the election on a party ticket.”

Chatterjee refused to comment on the issue, citing the nature of the office he is holding. Asked about his next course of action, the 79-year-old Speaker, the first from Bengal, told reporters: “I know it. You do not have to tell me that. You are not doing justice to the institution (of Speaker).”

CPM general secretary Prakash Karat, too, was terse, asked whether Chatterjee would step down as Speaker. “I am sure the Speaker will decide on his own, taking into account all the circumstances,” Karat said.

Party sources said they did not want to drag the post of the Speaker of the Lok Sabha into “unnecessary controversies”. The Speaker will wait and “assess” the situation and take a “call” at the right time, the sources said.

In his capacity as a member of Parliament from the CPM, he will vote against the confidence motion in line with the party whip after he demits office, the sources added.

Having first entered the Lok Sabha in 1971, Chatterjee is among the country’s longest-serving parliamentarians. He took oath as Speaker on June 4, 2004, on being elected the UPA-Left’s joint candidate.

In Calcutta, Mamata Banerjee demanded Chatterjee’s resignation. “Political ethics demand Somnathbabu quit as Lok Sabha Speaker after his name figured on the list of MPs submitted to the President,” the Trinamul Congress leader told a news conference. “On moral grounds, he should not continue as Speaker for a second.”

Mamata got an unexpected supporter in Bengal Assembly Speaker Hashim Abdul Halim. “If Somnathda’s name was given on the list of Left MPs following his consent, he should quit,” he said.

Mamata ‘vote’

Mamata said she would vote when the confidence motion was placed in the Lok Sabha but refused to say which way she would tilt. She stayed away from today’s NDA meeting in Delhi.

“I might be a lone (Trinamul) member in the Lok Sabha. But I cannot act independently since the matter has to be discussed at the party forum threadbare,” she said.

Trinamul sources said Mamata had a good rapport with Mulayam Singh Yadav as the Samajwadi Party’s unit is one of the constituents of her 18-party alliance.