Former Lok Sabha speaker Somnath Chatterjee today said that he did not accept the offer of the Congress to become member of the Rajya Sabha because he did not want to take any favours from that party. On October 21, he wrote to Union Home Minister P Chidambaram rejecting the offer of the government of making him a nominated member of the Upper House of Parliament.

“I cannot answer why the Congress gave me the offer. But If I had taken the offer people will say that I have accepted the Congress’s offer which I would not have been able to digest. And the second thing is that after spending 40 years in Lok Sabha in which I was speaker for five years, I did not think I would have been able to contribute much to Parliament. And a nominated member does not have much scope,” Somnath, who was expelled from the CPM for refusing to resign the post of Speaker during the former UPA government, told The Indian Express.

Somnath also said it was not the first time the Congress sent him an offer to accept a post. “Four months back I got the offer to become the Governor of one of the states. Before that I also got the offer to become an ambassador. But I turned down all those offers. I never worked under anybody. And now also I cannot do that,” the octogenarian leader said.

Somnath has set up a football academy, a polytechnic and a women’s school at Shantiniketan and said he has other plans to expand his activities.

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