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regular-article-logo Wednesday, 22 October 2025

All is forgiven, Sovan Chatterjee. Why former Calcutta mayor’s political comeback is good news

After nearly eight years in the political wilderness, he was last week appointed chairperson of the New Town Kolkata Development Authority), which stunned most in Bengal’s ruling Trinamool

Our Bureau Published 22.10.25, 01:04 PM
Sovan Chatterjee

Sovan Chatterjee Library picture

Sovan Chatterjee, the former mayor of Calcutta, is unsinkable.

After nearly eight years in the political wilderness, Chatterjee was last week appointed chairperson of the New Town Kolkata Development Authority (NKDA), a comeback that stunned most in Bengal’s ruling Trinamool.

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A huge section in the party admits that Chatterjee was effective in his role first as a member in the late Subrata Mukherjee’s mayor-in-council, when Chatterjee was given charge of the water supply department, and later as the city mayor.

“He was good in his job, brought about efficiency in the daily workings and was a hands-on mayor,” said a former employee of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) who had seen mayors when the Left controlled the board.

“He would not think twice before reaching any spot where an incident had taken place.”

Sovan Chatterjee did not have an easy beginning as Calcutta mayor. He was anointed the city’s first resident a year before Mamata Banerjee took oath and walked to Bengal’s traditional seat of power, Writers’ Buildings.

That year during the monsoon, Chatterjee felt the heat. Calcutta had flooded once again and the new mayor did not know what to do to ease the situation.

Pleading helplessness, he had said, much like his predecessors from the CPM: “Calcutta is shaped like a saucer and it can handle 6 to 7 mm of rainfall per hour.”

A quick thinker and quicker to act, Chatterjee had learnt his lesson.

Next year, way ahead of the monsoon, he held meetings with the departments concerned like drainage, disaster management and others to keep the city rolling while it poured.

“Maps were drawn, lists prepared of areas prone to waterlogging. Booklets with the information were distributed among the officials,” said a source in the KMC.

Chatterjee’s meeting with Trinamool’s general secretary and Lok Sabha MP Abhishek Banerjee this year came within days after Calcutta was hit by a massive deluge that claimed around a dozen lives and kept upscale residential areas such as Ballygunge under water.

Despite the murmurs against Chatterjee’s successor and once-rival in the party, present mayor Firhad Hakim, heads have not rolled in the aftermath of last month’s deluge and utter mismanagement.

With the Assembly elections approaching, the strategist in Mamata knows it would be harakiri to remove Hakim, the party’s tallest leader among Muslims, a steady support base for the Trinamool.

The nature of governance in India makes it impossible for heads to roll for inefficiency – from Delhi to Calcutta.

Seven years ago, Sovan Chatterjee stepped down as mayor and also from the Mamata Banerjee cabinet not because of any dereliction of duty. The spilling of his personal life into the public sphere brought about his downfall.

After he walked out on his wife of 23 years and two adult sons, Mamata offered him to make a choice between his administrative responsibilities or his partner. Sovan Chatterjee chose the latter.

One factor that might have worked in his favour and helped his comeback is that Sovan Chatterjee belongs to the old school of political fund managers.

When Mamata was a Union minister, Sovan – or Kanan as she prefers to call him – was a constant presence. The level of trust between the two was such that Mamata let him hold the purse strings in the party.

With the Supreme Court striking down electoral bonds last year, time had indeed come for a trusted hand like Sovan Chatterjee, who knows how to raise and allocate funds judiciously, to return to the party fold.

He has been out of political reckoning for a long while. Many see the appointment to chair the NKDA as a first step to a larger role for the former mayor to play in the city and also Bengal’s politics.

His X (formerly Twitter) bio still retains ‘Honorable Mayor and MLA Behala (East) constituency’, though he is neither.

After September 2025, Calcutta residents’ message to their Sovan da is, “Come back. All is forgiven.”

Calcutta does not want to get flood-stuck. And “Jol Sovan” – as he is known – seems the best bet.

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