By IANS,
Kolkata: West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee Sunday claimed the Left Front will benefit from the poll campaign by former Lok Sabha speaker Somnath Chatterjee but said the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) has given no thought to re-admitting the expelled leader to the party.
“He was an important leader of our party. Some problems arose some two years back. But still he is with our party and he is with the left movement. It is good that he is campaigning for us. No doubt it will help us,” the chief minister said.
Chatterjee was expelled from the CPI-M mid 2008 for presiding over the Lok Sabha trust vote by defying the party diktat to resign from the speaker’s post after it withdrew support to the Manmohan Singh led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government over the Indo-US civilian nuclear deal.
However, Chatterjee has been campaigning for the CPI-M since last weak by issuing appeals to the electorate besides holding two election meetings Saturday and Sunday.
Asked whether the party was considering to take the octogenarian leader back in its fold, Bhattacharjee said: “That depends on many things. We have not given any thought on that.”
The chief minister said the campaign by former state finance minister Ashok Mitra will also benefit the party.
“They (Chatterjee and Mitra) are well known to the people of our state as leaders. They are with the leftist camp. If they campaign of course we will gain,” he said.