Last month when the Lok Sabha debated and voted the trust motion, there was an unusual Left fellow-traveller watching the proceedings from the Speaker’s gallery.

An industrialist from West Bengal, a former chairman of the Indian Chamber of Commerce and, yes, a firm believer in the “Left ideology”—Shishir Bajoria.

Host, friend and well-wisher of West Bengal’s CPM leaders, Bajoria’s name had cropped up in news columns just a week before the vote. It was at a dinner that he hosted in London that the party’s state chief Biman Bose allegedly made a controversial statement on the possibility of the party’s future relationship with the BJP.

So who’s this millionaire Marxist?

The combined assets of the companies he heads are estimated at Rs 532 crore. His SK Bajoria group companies operates in four continents and in sectors ranging from refractories and bioceramics to art and travel.

Though not a card-carrying Marxist, he sticks to the party line—even if it is on issues concerning his friends.

Bajoria, though a very good friend of Somnath Chatterjee, toes the hardcore Prakash Karat line on the Speaker issue. Bajoria says: “I would not get into any political controversy, But as an individual, my opinion is that Somnathda should have resigned as soon as his party withdrew support to the UPA. After all, he was elected from the party first and then became the Speaker.”

Bajoria’s association with the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation as an advisor had brought him close to Chatterjee when he had headed it and other CPM leaders associated with the corporation.

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