The party’s spectre hangs over his head but its shadow crossed his face for only a fleeting moment at the end of what had been a long day at work for Somnath Chatterjee. JD(U) member Prabhunath Singh, who twisted the knife into both the Congress and the Left, wrapped up his speech by praising the Speaker for standing up to those who had looked at him with “red eyes.” Chatterjee promptly cut him off: “I may be a big man in appearance but am otherwise small,” he said.

The CPM leadership may have spent hours discussing his fate and deciding what to do with his defiance but Chatterjee today appeared unfazed. With his wife Renu and daughters Anuradha and Anushila watching — perhaps for the first time, together in the visitors’ gallery — if Chatterjee was aware that this could be his penultimate day in the chair before he has to give in to the party’s diktat, he shrugged it off.

“Mr Saleem, you’ve already taken twenty-six minutes...Your party (the CPM) has two more speakers to follow. If you would like to take their time, too, it’s for you to decide,” he told CPM’s Mohd Saleem, who stood out for his half-an-hour-long intervention in the debate.

An exchange with trade union leader CPI’s Gurudas Dasgupta was similarly testy. “I should be given five more minutes. We can sit here till 10 pm...We should have a change (in the system),” said Dasgupta, to which Chatterjee asked: “Who will bring about that change?”

... contd.