Somnath Chatterjee no more

Guwahati (Assam), Aug 13, 2018:

Veteran Communist leader and former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee passed away in Kolkata on Monday morning. He was 89.

He was admitted at a private hospital in Kolkata for the past few days following kidney ailments and breathed his last at 8.15 am, sources said.

A stalwart among the Communist leaders in India, Chatterjee had served as the Speaker of the Lok Sabha from 2004 to 2009.

Born at Tezpur in Assam on 25^th July 1929, Chatterjee had represented Bolpur constituency in Lok Sabha nine times.

CPI (M) had dismissed him from the party for violating its diktat of resigning from the post of Speaker when the communist party had withdrawn its support to the UPA government in mid 2008.