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Senior TMC chief and West Bengal minister Subrata Mukherjee will go down in historical past as a person for all seasons who sailed by means of the state’s politics each as a deft politician and an ready administrator for greater than 50 years. Seventy-five-year-old Mukherjee, who held the panchayat and rural growth portfolios, died after extended sickness at a state-run hospital in Kolkata on Thursday night.
Born in 1946 in South 24 Parganas district, Mukherjee was the eldest of 5 siblings. A stalwart in Bengal politics, his political profession spanned greater than 5 many years, starting within the tumultuous Sixties as a scholar chief.
After being baptised in politics as a scholar chief of Bangabasi Faculty in 1967, when West Bengal had its first non-Congress authorities, Mukherjee, by means of his organisational and oratory expertise, rapidly rose by means of the ranks and have become one of the crucial well-liked leaders of the Congress, together with late union minister Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi and former state Congress president Somen Mitra. Dasmunsi and Mitra died in 2017 and 2020 respectively.
Mukherjee’s organisational expertise have been seen by Dasmunsi, who took him underneath his wing. The pair crisscrossed the size and breadth of West Bengal, preventing the two-front ideological and political battle with the Naxalites and the Left. His oratory and organisational expertise had additionally earned him reward of then prime minister Indira Gandhi.
Mukherjee’s first brush with electoral politics got here in 1971 when he turned the youngest MLA within the West Bengal meeting from the Ballygunge seat at 25. His political profession reached a brand new excessive when in 1972, he turned the youngest minister within the Siddhartha Shankar Ray cupboard after the Congress returned to energy with a large mandate. He was made the minister of state for info and tradition.
He was typically criticised for suppressing the press through the Emergency interval from 1975-77. Though he misplaced the elections in 1977, it didn’t cease his speedy development within the social gathering, and he was again within the meeting after the 1982 polls from the Jorabagan seat. He remained a member of the meeting until the final day of his life, from the Ballygunge seat.
In response to veteran politicians of the state, Mukherjee was the political mentor of chief minister Mamata Banerjee throughout her preliminary years in Chhatra Parishad within the late Seventies and early Sixties. Mukherjee had proposed Banerjee’s title because the Congress candidate towards then CPI(M) stalwart Somnath Chatterjee from the Jadavpur Lok Sabha seat in 1984 parliamentary polls. Banerjee went on to defeat Chatterjee to emerge as an enormous killer in state politics.
One of the crucial vibrant politicians within the state, Mukherjee was additionally identified for his sense of humour and as somebody who was comfortable when it got here to shifting camps. He additionally acted in a tv serial alongside Moon Moon Sen within the late Eighties.
ALSO READ | Ailing West Bengal Minister Subrata Mukherjee Dies at 75, ‘Massive Blow’ Says Mamata Banerjee
He converted to the newly-formed TMC in 1999, though he remained an MLA of the Congress from the Chowringhee seat. His acumen as an ready administrator was extensively praised throughout his tenure because the mayor of the Kolkata Municipal Company (KMC) from 2000 to 2005.
However in 2005, on account of variations with Banerjee, he left the TMC and fashioned an alliance with the NCP. Mukherjee’s desertion dealt a heavy blow to the TMC, resulting in its defeat within the 2005 KMC election.
Livid over his betrayal, Banerjee had nicknamed him “tormuj” (watermelon), describing him as somebody who was a Congress activist in public however was hand in glove with the CPI(M). Although one of many Left Entrance regime’s fiercest critics, Mukherjee was identified for sustaining shut ties with CPI(M) leaders, together with the then chief minister Jyoti Basu.
He later went again to the Congress in 2005 solely to abandon it once more simply forward of the 2010 KMC polls to affix the TMC. “Subrata Mukherjee was not solely an ready organiser and administrator however had a deep reference to the grassroots stage staff. Possibly, that was the explanation that he was all the time on the profitable aspect,” veteran Congress chief and MP Pradip Bhattacharya mentioned.
In 2011, he was elected from the Ballygunge seat as a TMC candidate and was given the panchayats and rural growth cost. Throughout his tenure, West Bengal earned laurels for being one of many top-performing states within the implementation of the MGNREGA scheme.
He additionally held the portfolio of public enterprise and industrial reconstruction. Simply forward of the 2016 meeting polls, Mukherjee’s title cropped up within the Narada sting tape case together with just a few different TMC leaders. He had denied any involvement and termed it a “political conspiracy”.
A graduate of anthropology and a grasp’s diploma holder in archaeology, Mukherjee was a vivid storyteller who firmly believed within the existence of ghosts. He unsuccessfully contested the Lok Sabha polls thrice — from Kolkata Northwest in 2004 and from Bankura in 2009 and 2019.
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