Mamata pays homage to former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee on his birth anniversary

"Homage to Somnath Chatterjee, former speaker of Lok Sabha, on his birth anniversary," Ms Banerjee posted on her social networking page.

Chatterjee, who was associated with the Communist Party of India (Marxist), served as Lok Sabha Speaker from 2004 to 2009 during the UPA-I rule.

In 1996, he was honoured with the ‘Outstanding Parliamentarian Award.’

Following the 2004 Lok Sabha General Election, Chatterjee was appointed as the pro tem speaker and was subsequently elected as the Speaker of the 14th Lok Sabha.

Born on this day in 1929 into a family of renowned lawyers and parliamentarians, Chatterjee, himself a barrister, joined the CPI (M) in 1968.

Starting in 1971, he was elected to the Lok Sabha 10 times - thrice from south Bengal constituencies Burdwan (1971) and Jadavpur (1977, 1980) and seven times from Bolpur (between 1985 and 2004).

He lost only once (in 1984 in Jadavpur) to Mamata Banerjee. But he maintained a cordial relationship with her.

Widely regarded among lawyers and lawmakers as an expert on the Indian Constitution, Chatterjee was in the mid-1990s given the challenging task of reviving industrialization in West Bengal. Under the then chief minister Jyoti Basu, the state was battling an image crisis and flight of entrepreneurial capital.

Chatterjee was always close to Basu and helped him draft the 1994 industrial policy—the first serious attempt to bring industries back to the state after decades of labour unrest.

In 2008, he was expelled from CPI (M) for not resigning as the Speaker after the party withdrew’s its support to the UPA alliance. Chatterjee refused to vote against the government during the No-Confidence Motion in 2008, as it would mean voting alongside the opposition party BJP.

According to Chatterjee, the expulsion was “one of the saddest days” of his life. He retired from active politics in 2009.

The veteran Marxist leader died at a city hospital on August 13, 2018.