The family of former Lok Sabha speaker Somnath Chatterjee yesterday turned down the Communist Party of India (Marxist)’s request to drape the expelled member’s body in a red flag and allow him to be taken to the party’s West Bengal headquarters in Kolkata and even barred one of the leaders from entering his house.
“The party had requested us that they want to take the body to the state headquarters for partymen to pay their respects. But we said, we don’t want. The party had requested that they wanted to drape the body in red flag. We refused,” Chatterjee’s daughter Anushila Basu said.
Chatterjee, a 10-time Lok Sabha member – nine times as CPM candidate and once as an independent backed by the party – was expelled in July 2008 for refusing to resign as the speaker after the party withdrew support to the Congress government protesting against the India-US civil nuclear deal.
He had at the time said the office of the speaker was above party affiliations and he ceased to be a CPM member once he took over the job.
Chatterjee died at a Kolkata nursing home yesterday, aged 89.
West Bengal Left Front chairman and CPM stalwart Biman Bose, who went to Chatterjee’s South Kolkata residence to pay his homage, was red faced after the late leaders’ son Pratap Chatterjee asked him: 
“Why have you come here?”
Chatterjee told security personnel that Bose was unwelcome.
Bose left but returned in the evening with CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury. But Chatterjee again asked him to leave.
Speaking to the reporters later, Chatterjee accused Bose of having “insulted and said bad things” about his father after his expulsion.
Anushila recalled that she had seen her father shed tears the day the CPM expelled him.
“I was in Delhi then. I told my father that from now on you are a free bird. After some time, I went to see him at his chamber. I found him sitting ... with tears rolling down his eyes.” 
Anushila said neither Chatterjee nor any other family member could accept the harsh decision.
However, she said Chatterjee had a deep love for the party till the very end.
“We often tried to provoke him to speak against the party. But he never uttered a word against the party. So deep was his fondness.
“The divorce was only on pen and paper. But mentally, he was not divorced from the party,” she said.
Anushila said a number of other parties and others had come to his father with many lucrative offers. “But his answer was always the same – No.”
Under the CPM constitution, an expelled member has to apply for re-entry. Feelers were sent to Chatterjee but he refused to apply on his own. And let it be known that he would be game if the party on its own took him back.
Chatterjee, the first Communist speaker of the Lok Sabha, died following a cardiac arrest and prolonged old age-related illness.
He 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.
In Kolkata, as the news of Chatterjee’s death became public, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee rushed to the clinic and paid her last respects.
From the clinic, the body was taken to the Calcutta High Court, where Chatterjee had started his legal practice in the early 1960s. Judges, lawyers and clerks all came out of the corridors of the court to pay homage to him.
The next stop was the assembly, where the body was placed on a high platform. The bugle played the last post before he was accorded a guard of honour and gun salute.
Banerjee was present at both stops, and even walked barefoot from the high court to the assembly.
The cortege was then carried to Chatterjee’s house in south Kolkata, where his wife Renu and other family members wept inconsolably. Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan, who flew in from Delhi, garlanded the corpse.
Sometime after evening, the body was donated to the SSKM Hospital, in deference to Chatterjee’s wish that his mortal remains be used for medical causes.
President Ram Nath Kovind and Prime Minister Narendra Modi led the nation in paying glowing tributes to Chatterjee.