Click to play videoNew Delhi: There's an air of the headmaster about him, but Somnath Chatterjee may be the one of the best copybook Speakers the country has had.
Well-versed in Parliamentary proceedings, Chatterjee has been an MP for more than four decades.
An enigmatic Communist juggling between a hugely successful legal practice and his passion for parliamentary politics, he replaced the late Jyotirmoy Basu as the leader of the CPI(M) in Lok Sabha. But the Marxists who considered him indispensable in Parliament did not let him rise in the party hierarchy.
He never became a member of the Politburo. He was made a member of the party's Central Committee quite late in his career. But he was always Jyoti Basu's favourite. So when Basu wanted to revive West Bengal's industries, he made Chatterjee the chairman of the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation.
Like Basu, Chatterjee believes that a communal BJP is a much bigger enemy. Chatterjee may be the first Communist to have ever held a constitutional post, but his father N C Chatterjee, was a founder-leader of the Hindu Mahasabha.
As the speaker of the House, Somnath Chatterjee found himself at the centre of quite a few controversies.
During his tenure he was also seen battling intervention of judiciary into the affairs of the legislature. He took on the judiciary for questioning Parliament's expulsion of 11 MPs involved in the cash-for-query scandal.
Somnath was also critical of poor conduct and unruly behaviour of Lok Sabha members. In May 2008, he even referred 32 MPs to the Privileges Committee for 'disorderly conduct'. Most of them belonged to the Opposition.
(With Diptosh Majumdar
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