Subrata Mukherjee (June 1946 – November 2021)
"Indirar dui putra, Priya Ranjan aar Subrata (Indira's two sons, Priya Ranjan and Subrata)".
The slogan used to ring in most Left political circles as well as university campuses of Bengal in the 1960s. The young Turks of Congress, Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi and Subrata Mukherjee were creating a sort of stir in Bengal, which very few party workers could think of in those days. The gradual closeness to Indira Gandhi, the then Congress chief, as most would see, was inevitable.
But, hardly did Subrata Mukherjee, who hailed from the Sarengabad area of Budge Budge in South 24 Parganas and enrolled as a student of B.Sc in Anthropology in the Bangabashi College of central Kolkata, ever imagine that he would eventually end up as the president of the Congress students' wing 'Chhatra Parishad' and also win the state Assembly elections in 1971 from Ballygunge constituency – all at the age of 25 years!
The following year saw Subrata contesting from the same seat and winning hands down. By that time, the young gun of the Congress could not be ignored anymore and Subrata Mukherjee became the Minister-of-State in the Siddhartha Shankar Roy-cabinet. He was the youngest minister that Bengal had ever seen to be sworn-in to the office and the record remains intact to date.
Time has seen Subrata losing the elections in 1977 as Bengal literally swayed the Red way and the Left Front marched to power at the state's hustings. By the 1982 Assembly elections, Subrata changed his seat and contested from the Jorabagan constituency in north Kolkata. He won and went on to represent the constituency three consecutive times. 1996 saw Subrata contesting from the Chowringhee seat, where he again won the polls.
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Then came the winter of 1998 and the division of Congress as well as the creation of the Trinamool Congress. Subrata joined hands with Mamata Banerjee in 1999 and in the following year, he did something, which was unthinkable at that time. Being a Congress legislator, Subrata Mukherjee contested the Kolkata Municipal Corporation elections on a Trinamool Congress ticket from Ward number 87, and won!
Subrata became the Mayor of Kolkata and much of the city's civic services were revamped during his tenure. By 2001, he had severed ties with the Congress and being the Mayor of Kolkata, Subrata Mukherjee contested the Assembly polls from Chowringhee and won. The honeymoon between Subrata and Trinamool Congress lasted for the next four years, but he fell out with Mamata Banerjee in 2005 and contested the civic elections as a Nationalist Congress Party candidate. Though he himself won, all others of his newly formed NCP and Congress-aided platform, bit the dust. The Left Front took control of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation, drawing curtains to the Subrata-era in the prestigious civic body.
In 2006, Subrata lost the Assembly polls from Chowringhee as a Congress candidate, but that did not deter him from sharing the anti-Nano factory dais at Singur with Mamata Banerjee in 2008. Eventually, he rejoined Trinamool Congress in May 2010 and was made a minister in the Mamata Banerjee-cabinet the following year after he won from Ballygunge Assembly seat and the Trinamool Congress pulled the rugs from under the feet of the Left Front ending the Left's 34-year stint in Bengal.
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Being a veteran politician, whose career spanned six decades, Subrata Mukherjee could never win a Lok Sabha election. Be it in 2004 from the Kolkata North-West seat or in 2009 as a Congress-Trinamool alliance candidate from Bankura or again in 2019 from Bankura as a Trinamool Congress candidate, Subrata's tryst with the Parliament remained unfulfilled. He was also defeated as a Congress candidate to the Rajya Sabha in 2009.
Tasting defeat or attaining the higher echelons of public office, Subrata Mukherjee remained an evergreen character of Bengal politics, just as he remained a lifetime patron of his local Ekdalia Evergreen Club. The club, which still continues to stick to the traditional form of Durga Puja, never budged to theme-Puja pressure from many big-ticket Durga Pujas of Kolkata. Just like his political career, Subrata Mukherjee's Ekdalia Evergreen still continues to draw one of the largest crowds during the annual autumn festival.
Earlier this year, Subrata had yet again won by a huge margin from the Ballygunge constituency, marking his golden jubilee year of representing the seat. The win had a hint of controversy with it when in May, he was arrested by the CBI in the Narada sting operation case along with another cabinet minister of the Mamata Banerjee-cabinet Firhad Hakim, Trinamool legislator Madan Mitra and former Kolkata Mayor Sovan Chatterjee. All were later on released on bail.
With his passing away, Bengal politics has lost the last of the troika – Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi-Subrata Mukherjee-Soumen Mitra. The evergreen Bengal politician with a permanent smile on his lips walked into the sunset on the evening of the festival of lights.
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