Karat hints at Somnath's return to CPI-M

Three years after the expulsion of Marxist stalwart Somnath Chatterjee from the Communist Party of India-Marxist, the party has dropped a broad hint of considering his return if there was a specific proposal.

"If specific proposals are received, we will give a thought to it (the return of Chatterjee to the party)," CPI-M General Secretary Prakash Karat said, but refused to elaborate when mediapersons questioned him on the sidelines of a seminar at Durgapur on Monday.

Chatterjee, who retired as Lok Sabha Speaker in 2009, declined to comment on the issue when questioned by reporters.

"I have no comment to make," Chatterjee told PTI in Kolkata over phone.

Stating that he was not keeping well, he said, "Whatever I had to say on it, I had already clarified to the party in 2008 and now I have nothing more to say."

Chatterjee was expelled from CPI-M after he refused to resign from the post of the Lok Sabha Speaker prior to the vote of confidence moved by the UPA government in 2008 after the Left withdrew support to it.

He had said that he was above politics as the Lok Sabha Speaker. It was said that the CPI-M's vital decision piloted for adoption by the central committee and the politburo on July 23, 2008 to expel Chatterjee, once the CPI-M leader in the Lok Sabha, was mostly at the insistence of Karat.

Chatterjee was charged with seriously compromising the position of the party. "His conduct seriously compromised the position of the party," the CPI-M had said in a statement while expelling him from the party.

The former Speaker has been lately seen sharing the dais on many occasions with West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, Left Front chairman Biman Bose and other party leaders.