Master organiser who failed to stop spilt in Bengal Cong dies
Ailing Cong chief suffered cardiac arrest at Kolkata hospital
Kolkata, July 30: West Bengal Congress chief Somen Mitra, who died on Thursday, will go down in history as a leader who could make friends with rivals with the consummate ease of a political craftsman but failed to prevent a debilitating split in the party and presided over its gradual decline.
The split sowed the seeds for the formation of the Trinamul (grassroots) Congress led by a fiery Mamata Banerjee who, in the years that followed, decimated both the mighty Left and the Congress.
A known bte noire of West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, it was during Mitra’s second term as Congress president in the late 1990s that his party lost the status of the principal opposition to the then seemingly invincible Left Front to the TMC.
Mitra passed away at a city hospital in the early hours of Thursday aged 78. He was in the hospital for 17 days due to heart and kidney problems. He died following a cardiac arrest, hospital sources said.
Born on December 31, 1941, in Jessore district of the erstwhile East Bengal (now Bangladesh), Mitra was the eldest of five siblings.
A stalwart in West Bengal politics, Mitra cut his teeth in politics during
the tumultuous 1960s as a student leader.
After his baptism in politics as a student leader in 1967, when Bengal had its first non-Congress government, Mitra, through his organisational and oratorical skills, quickly rose through the ranks and became one of the most popular leaders of the party along with late union minister Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi.
Mentored by Congress stalwarts like A.B.A. Ghani Khan Chowdhury, Mitra’s first brush with electoral politics happened in 1972 when he became the youngest MLA in the West Bengal Assembly from the Sealdah seat at the age of 26.
Except for 1977, Mitra continued to win the Sealdah assembly segment, which has now ceased to exist after delimitation, for six consecutive terms from 1982 to 2006.
Addressed as “Chhorada” (younger brother) by his supporters, Mitra was one of the most firebrand politicians in the 1960s and 1970s, and had played a crucial role in the fight against the Naxals in Kolkata during that period.
It was during that time that Mamata Banerjee, then the West Bengal Youth Congress president, was fast emerging as the rallying point against the Left Front dispensation.
Mitra and Ms Banerjee got locked in an internecine feud. The relations between the two hit rock bottom when Banerjee pitted herself against Mitra for the post of state Congress president.
Mitra managed to win the party election by 22 votes amid acrimonious scenes at Maharashtra Niwas in south Kolkata.
It was alleged that Mitra, backed by the then Congress national president Sitaram Kesari, cornered Ms Banerjee in the party. Banerjee broke away and launched the Trinamul Congress in 1998.
He left the Congress in 2008 to form his political outfit Pragatisheel (Progressive) Indira Congress.
EXCEPT FOR 1977, Mitra continued to win the Sealdah assembly segment, which has now ceased to exist after delimitation, for six consecutive terms from 1982 to 2006 A STALWART in West Bengal politics, Somen Mitra cut his teeth in politics during the tumultuous 1960s as a student leader.