Somnath: Ambitious?

Agartala, July 25: Former CPM MP Badal Chowdhury and member of the party’s central committee addressed the secret delegates’ session at the divisional committee conference of the party in Shantir Bazar on Wednesday night and charged expelled Speaker Somnath Chatterjee with personal ambition.

The incumbent finance minister said, “He had wanted in writing to become President of the country last year and offered to conduct negotiations with the Congress if the party approved of it. The party central committee rejected the idea and then he wanted to be Vice-President but the central committee turned down this plea.”

A number of delegates had expressed reservations over the likely impact on the public over Chatterjee’s expulsion from primary membership.

Chowdhury said since he had joined the party in 1968, Chatterjee had never integrated himself with the Communist culture of the party and continued to lead a “bourgeois life”.

Twelve years ago in 1996, when the CPM was confronted with the crucial question of joining the United Front government, Chatterjee had called a meeting of all then CPM MPs at his residence and asked them to sign a letter urging the central committee to let Jyoti Basu become the Prime Minister and the party to join the government.

“Most of the MPs refused to sign the letter and the party took a serious view of this, as it could not join the government. Nor could it let Jyotibabu become Prime Minister because of ideological obligations,” Chowdhury told the delegates.

In open meetings and rallies, the party leadership continues to maintain a more discreet stance on the issue.

A dissident party leader and state committee member said, “In Communist parties skeletons are allowed to tumble out of cupboards only after a leader is dead or expelled. The process of de-Stalinisation had commenced only in 20th Congress of Soviet communist party in 1996, three years after Joseph Stalin had died and the tradition is alive and kicking even now.”