Partha Chatterjee | The fall of a heavyweight 

With its former leader in jail over corruption, Trinamool is on a sticky wicket

In 2006, when Partha Chatterjee was elected Leader of the Opposition in the West Bengal Assembly, a group of journalists asked him about the new responsibility. “There is no one else around,” Mr. Chatterjee said. Clearly, in the formative years of the Trinamool Congress, Mr. Chatterjee was one of its tallest leaders after Mamata Banerjee. During the tumultuous times between 2006 and 2011, when protests against forcible land acquisition at Singur and Nandigram rocked West Bengal politics, Ms. Banerjee and Mr. Chatterjee took on the mighty Left Front, which had 235 MLAs compared to the Trinamool’s 30. Mr. Chatterjee was the voice of Opposition both inside the House and outside. Many still recall how he squatted outside the office of former Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee during the Nandigram agitation.

For such a promising political leader whose career spanned several decades, the fall was sudden and steep. The dramatic recovery of cash amounting to ₹50 crore and several kilograms of gold from two properties of Arpita Mukherjee, an associate of the Minister, has not only shocked political circles but even the rank and file of the Trinamool. According to the Enforcement Directorate (ED), the cash and jewellery was seized when the agency was conducting raids in the School Service Commission recruitment scam, which involves irregularities in recruitment of teachers and non-teaching staff in State-run schools. Mr. Chatterjee, along with his associate, was arrested on July 23 and will be under ED custody till August 3. He has been stripped of his ministerial and party responsibilities.

Mr. Chatterjee rose to the top levels of the party from a student leader in Kolkata’s Asutosh College. After a degree in economics, he completed an MBA. He then left a corporate career to join the Trinamool. When the party came to power in 2011, he was number two in the government holding crucial portfolios like Industries and Commerce, Information and Technology and School and Higher Education.

The 69-year-old leader shared a camaraderie with the party chairperson Ms. Banerjee who would often joke about his girth at Industry summits. Partha Da, as Ms. Banerjee would call him, was the key adjudicator of the Trinamool, maintaining a balance between the party and the government, and taking decisions of the party's disciplinary committee. Mr. Chatterjee was the Trinamool’s go-to person even for Governors, from Gopal Krishna Gandhi to Jagdeep Dhankhar. Interestingly, Mr. Chatterjee was planning to write a memoir about the Governors at Raj Bhawan he encountered from 2006 till date.

Even when the Trinamool was finding it difficult to defend its leaders in the Saradha chit fund scam and Naradha sting tapes, no aspersions were cast on Mr. Chatterjee. In public perception, he was always ‘Mr. Clean’.

Interestingly, the fall of Mr. Chatterjee comes at a time when the old order of the party is making way for the new. The rise of Abhishek Banerjee, the nephew of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, in the party seems to coincide with older leaders and trusted lieutenants of Ms. Banerjee moving away. With Mukul Roy out of active politics, Subrata Mukherjee no more and Mr. Chatterjee behind bars, Ms. Banerjee’s ‘confidants’ are no longer part of the party’s decision making.

More than the old versus new, Mr. Chatterjee’s arrest and related developments point at a rot that has set in West Bengal’s ruling dispensation — and the fact that scandals have haunted it during the entire 11 years of power. From the Saradha chit fund scam of 2013, Naradha tapes of 2016 and the corruption in relief distribution after cyclone Amphan in 2020, the Trinamool has always found itself on a sticky wicket on the issue of corruption.