Somnath Chatterjee
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Somnath Chatterjee (born July 25, 1929 in Tezpur, Assam) is a politician in India. He is currently the Speaker of the 14th Lok Sabha (House of the people).
Chatterjee is a member of the Communist Party of India - Marxist. He joined the party in 1968. In 1971, he was given a ticket to contest an interim election caused by the death of his father who was elected from that constituency. He became a Member of the Lok Sabha in 1971 and was elected the first time as an independent candidate supported by the CPI (M). Subsequently he was re-elected 9 times, except once when he was trounced by Mamata Banerjee in the Jadavpur constituency. He now sits for Bolpur which is considered a red bastion. He is a member of Parliament for the 10th time. In the 10th Lok Sabha he was elected leader of his party. In 1996 he won the Outstanding Parliamentarian Award. During Jyoti Basu's tenure, he was the Chairman of WBIDC and in that capacity he made countless overseas trips to promote FDI in West Bengal. His penchant for signing Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), many of which never came to fruition, earned him the nickname Mou-da. With Buddhadeb Bhattacharya becoming the Chief Minister, Somnath's influence within the party and the state government has waned considerably although as Speaker of the Lok Sabha he has a constitutional position of importance.
In 2005, he was caught in a controversy over his statement on the Supreme Court orders related to the vote of confidence in the Jharkhand Assembly. He said that the Supreme Court was encroaching the right of the Legislature by issuing orders on the proceedings of the Jharkhand Assembly. He asked for a Presidential refernce to the Supreme Court under Article 143 of the Indian Constitution. This remark was not well taken by BJP which supported the Supreme Court's decisions.
Chatterjee was educated at Mitra Institution School (Calcutta), Presidency College and then Calcutta University in Calcutta. He also attended Cambridge University and was called to the bar in England. He was a litigating barrister at the Calcutta High Court before joining active politics.
Personal life
The father of Somnath Chatterjee, Nirmal Chandra Chatterjee, was the president of the Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha, a Hindu fundamentalist party and a forerunner of today's BJP. Later he left Hindu Mahasabha to join left politics and was elected to the Parliament with CPI (M) support.
In 1950, Somnath married Renu Chatterjee and has one son, Pratap Chatterjee, and 2 daughters Rita and Nita. Both his grandsons Shaswata and Saurabh have left India and now work in the USA. His nickname is Habul and in his early childhood after a bout of nephritis he lost eyesight in one of his eyes-a fact not widely known.
Political Career
Shri Somnath Chatterjee began his career as a lawyer and joined active politics in 1968, when he became a member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). He has been one of the party’s leading spokesmen. His association with national politics began when he contested the elections to the Lok Sabha in 1971 and was elected the very first time. Since then, he has served as a member in all successive Lok Sabhas, getting elected for the tenth time in 2004 as a member of the present 14th Lok Sabha. The fact that he won the Lok Sabha elections with impressive margins testifies to his popularity with the masses, his standing in his party and his stature as a parliamentarian.