Somnath Chatterjee

Somnath Chatterjee Biography

Somnath Chatterjee is a highly influential political leader from Bengal formerly associated with Communist Party of India. Currently he has been expelled from the party since 2008. A former parliamentarian, he has served as the Speaker of the Lok Sabha from 2004 to 2009. He has been a member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) from 1968 to 2008. In 1996 he was awarded the Outstanding Parliamentarian Award. He has been one of the most influential politicians at the present times of state politics as well, following Buddhadeb Bhattacharya.

He was born in Tezpur of Assam in 1929. His father, Nirmal Chandra Chatterjee was a prominent lawyer and nationalist. He was a noted author too. His mother Binapani Debi was a home maker. Following Indian independence when Communist Party was banned in India, Nirmal Chandra Chatterjee formed the All India Civil Liberties Union. Somnath’s higher education was completed at Bengal where he completed PG and LLB. He was active in his professional career as a lawyer before plunging into the world of politics. He got actively involved with Communist party since late 1960s and became a member of the party in 1968.

He became a Member of the Lok Sabha in 1971, where he stood as an independent candidate supported by CPI. Since then he has been elected 9 times, except once in 1984 when he lost to Mamata Banerjee in the Jadavpur constituency. In 2004, he was elected for the 10^th time to parliament and on 4 June 2004 he was unanimously elected as the Speaker of the 14th Lok Sabha. When CPI decided to withdraw its support from United Progressive Alliance in 2008, his party demanded his withdraw too. However as speaker he was reluctant to do it. As a result he was expelled from the party. In his words the expulsion was "one of the saddest days" of his life.

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Updated: January 18, 2016