IANS
Kolkata
Veteran parliamentarian Somnath Chatterjee, the first Communist Speaker of the Lok Sabha who had defied his party's call to quit the post, died here on Monday following a cardiac arrest and prolonged old age-related illness.
Chatterjee was given a 21 gun salute in the West Bengal Assembly, while the nation mourned the death of the barrister-turned-politician, known for championing the cause of the downtrodden. Chatterjee, 89, leaves behind his wife, a daughter and a son.
"He died at 8.15 a.m,"Bellevue Clinic CEO Pradip Tondon told IANS. Ailing for a long time, Chatterjee's condition turned grave on Sunday after he suffered a heart attack.
On August 7, he had been admitted to the clinic in a critical condition due to a kidney-related ailment and put on ventilator support.
A former Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) central committee member, Chatterjee was Lok Sabha Speaker during the first United Progressive Alliance (UPA-1) rule from 2004 to 2009.
It was during this stint that direct telecast of the Zero Hour started in 2004, while the Lok Sabha television channel came into existence in 2006.
However, on July 23, 2008, Chatterjee was expelled from the Communist Party of India-Marxist"for seriously compromising the position of the party"as he refused to resign as the Speaker after the CPI-M withdrew its support to the UPA-1 government over the Indo-US civil nuclear deal.
Chatterjee had then contended that the office of the Speaker was above party affiliations and he ceased to be a CPI-M member once he took over the job.