Kolkata: From ABA Ghani Khan Chowdhury to Pranab Mukherjee and Ajit Panja, from Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi to Subrata Mukherjee, from Adhir Chowdhury to Abdul Mannan and also Mamata Banerjee. There has been a steady stream of Dadas and Didis (brothers and sisters) in the spectrum of Congress leaders from West Bengal. But, there was only one Chhorda (younger brother). Somen Mitra.
Mitra passed away at a city hospital in the early hours of Thursday at the age of 78. He was in the hospital for 17 days due to heart and kidney-related problems.
"He died following a cardiac arrest," hospital sources said.
Born on December 31st, 1941 in Jessore district of erstwhile East Bengal (now Bangladesh), Mitra was the eldest of five siblings.
The near-permanent fixture in the state's politics, Mitra had witnessed the rise and fall of the Congress in West Bengal, a state which has offered a bouquet of party leaders of varied hues. From the late 1960s while working as a senior functionary of Chhatra Parishad, the students' wing of the party, to entering the hallways of the state Assembly as an MLA from the erstwhile Sealdah constituency in 1972, Somendranath Mitra aka Chhorda, had donned the roles of Pradesh Congress president of Bengal, a member of the Lok Sabha on a Trinamool Congress ticket and then again played a pivotal role in forging an alliance between the Left parties and the Congress to offer a third alternative in the state against the Trinamool Congress and the surging BJP.
For the record books, Somen Mitra was a three-time president of the Congress' West Bengal unit from 1992-1996, 1996-1998 (both times elected through the organisational voting) and finally being nominated in September 2018. He was also a seven-term MLA from Sealdah Assembly constituency (1972-2006, barring once in 1977). Factional feud within the Bengal Congress unit was always deep seeded with several factions baying for the other's blood.
The once trio of Somen, Priya and Subrata, who had virtually immortalised a room on the top floor of the iconic Mahajati Sadan wherefrom they spearheaded the Chhatra Parishad and then Congress' activities in Kolkata as the Red flag surged from most corners of the state, had all fallen to factional feuds later on. Mitra's toughest challenge within the Congress came from none other than Mamata Banerjee.
It was in 1992 when Mamata lost to Somen by 24 votes in an organisational election for the Bengal Congress president's post, that it was evident that the rift would only widen. Then came 1996, when Mamata openly revolted against the official candidate list of Congress for the Assembly elections. She had threatened to even commit suicide in front of Alipore Treasury Building in South Kolkata alleging that the list had several names, whom she termed as anti-socials. Incidentally, most of those 'controversial' candidates had won the polls and many of them had, later on, joined Mamata's Trinamool Congress.
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The vertical split of the Congress was becoming evident, which eventually happened in late 1997. Trinamool Congress came into existence and Mamata threw a literal challenge to Somen and his Congress, then Congress(I).
Incidentally, Mamata not only threatened the mere survival of the Congress as a political entity in West Bengal but eventually turned out to be an actual political force, the next best credible alternative to the marauding Left Front.
An exceptionally vocal Mamata had raised the flag from Bengal, which had already started fluttering from several other corners of the country, opposing the central leadership's control over state units of the Congress.
Mamata and her followers within the Congress had also been upfront against the Congress being led by pro-Delhi leaders like Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi, Subrata Mukherjee and, Somen Mitra. Incidentally, all three owed their political rise to either Indira, Sanjay or Rajiv Gandhi.
Mamata gave Somen a run for his money in the state's opposition political space and the 1998 poll results led to Mitra's stepping down from the post of PCC president in the state. Though the limelight shifted from Somen to Mamata, the 'North Kolkata tiger' was always lurking around the corners and in 2008 he formed the Pragatisheel Indira Congress.
Alarmed by the evident split in opposition votes, which could only lead to more consolidation of the Left Front, Mamata extended the first olive branch. On her persistent nudging, Somen merged his party with the Trinamool Congress.
Mamata offered him the Diamond Harbour seat in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, which he won by a handsome margin, stepping for the first time on the green carpet of the Parliament.
By 2014, the rift had again grown between the two warring poles of Mamata and Somen and the latter quit Trinamool to rejoin Congress. Though suffering a humiliating defeat in the hands of Trinamool Congress from the North Kolkata seat (Somen's vote share had dipped even below Rahul Sinha, the BJP candidate from the seat) and relegated to the police wilderness, Somen was back in business in the September of 2018, this time being nominated as the PCC chief of West Bengal.
The day he assumed charge at Bidhan Bhavan in central Kolkata, a building which he took personal care to build and shift the party's state unit from Haji Mohammed Mohsin Square, the huge enthusiasm among the Congress workers proved that Somen Mitra can never be written off from the political books of West Bengal.
Congress leaders like Rajya Sabha MP Pradip Bhattacharya, Lok Sabha MP Adhir Chowdhury and an ailing Abdul Mannan will now have to work their way to galvanise the political alliance with the Left Front ahead of next year's crucial Bengal polls. And it has to happen without the political prudence and brains of Somen and an ever-increasing presence of the BJP gobbling up the opposition space.
An all-out organisational man who was always seen in the quintessential attire of dhuti-kurta-white slippers, Somen Mitra, the Chhorda of Amherst Street and Sealdah walks to the sunset leaving behind a legacy, truly unmatched in Bengal's politics.
(Written by Etv Bharat's News Coordinator Dipankar Bose)
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