Prakash Karat wanted to teach Manmohan, Sonia lesson: Somnath Chatterjee

CPI-M general secretary Prakash Karat had decided to teach prime minister Manmohan Singh and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi a lesson for the 'insult' meted out to him on the nuclear deal issue by withdrawing support to the government in 2008.

 

With their larger-than-life image and influence on governance with 62 MPs, Karat, CPI's AB Bardhan and other Left leaders were of the belief that their decision would be the last word for the government, says former Lok Sabha speaker Somnath Chatterjee.

 

These are his views on the bitter period in his last days of his parliamentary career contained in his autobiography "Keeping the Faith: Memoirs of a Parliamentarian", which was released by prime minister Singh yesterday.

 

"After the formation of the UPA government with Manmohan Singh as the prime minister and Sonia Gandhi as the chairperson, it gradually became clear to all, specially those in the government, that the Left parties -- which had 62 members in the Lok Sabha and on whose outside support the survival of the government depended -- wanted to play the role of the 'real power behind the throne' as it were," Chatterjee says.

 

"The party gave the unpalatable impression that the UPA government could survive only with the blessings of the party's leaders, primarily of its general secretary, Prakash Karat. Needless to say, the common man took this to be nothing but unjustified arrogance on their part," he says.

 

According to the 81 year old Chatterjee, Congress' resolve to operationalise the nuclear deal irked Karat.

 

"It seemed that Karat had decided that the prime minister and the UPA chairperson had to be taught a lesson for the 'insult' meted out to him," he writes in the chapter 'The Expulsion: A Great Shock'.

 

The former Speaker, who won 10 terms to the Lok Sabha on behalf of the party that expelled him in 2008, writes that he had no role at all to play in the decision of the Left parties to withdraw support.

 

"I feel that the supposed 'affront' to Karat by the prime minister and UPA chairperson had upset him so much that he did not or could not objectively consider the consequences of his decision to withdraw support to the government," the book, published by HarperCollins India, says.

 

Chatterjee writes that there was a common perception that the Left leaders were wielding the real authority without being in the government and had thus arrogated to themselves de facto powers of governance without any corresponding accountability and had also become arbiters of the government's survival.

 

He says he had proposed that the CPI-M should take steps to rouse public opinion against the nuclear deal while maintaining that the party should continue to oppose the deal.

 

Providing a riveting account of one of the most tumultuous periods in the history of the Lok Sabha, 2004-09, he discusses why he chose not to resign as speaker when the CPI-M withdrew support from the Centre.

 

He also gives a comprehensive account of the subsequent confidence vote that he presided over and how he was treated by the party.

 

According to Chatterjee, Marxist patriarch Jyoti Basu had advised him to preside over the trust motion as speaker.

 

"Throughout my political career, I have received a lot of guidance and affection from Jyoti Basu, who had been till his last day, my undisputed leader. I felt I should take his opinion at that critical juncture. I met him in Kolkata on July 12, 2008 and showed him my communication with the party.

 

"Of course he was fully aware of the party's stand on the deal and I had no discussion with him on the issue...But he advised me that I should preside over the proceedings of the House on the confidence motion.

 

"My resignation, he felt as I too believed, would suggest that I was compromising my position as speaker and allowing my actions to be dictated by my party, which would be wholly unethical..."

 

He says he anticipated some disciplinary action against him by the party but never thought it would be done in such haste.

 

"It was most surprising and unbecoming of a principled party like the CPI-M, which I always believed never misled the people, that its general secretary and some of his close colleagues would take a totally misleading position for public consumption, while at the same time confabulating among themselves to force me as Speaker to accept a subservient role to the party, even if such a step transgressed all principles of constitutional propriety."