Somnath Chatterjee’s reluctance to step down as Speaker in open defiance of a diktat by his party CPM today became the nucleus of the political showdown between the Congress and the Left barely a week ahead of the trust vote in Parliament.

While the CPM remained firm that he should resign, an embattled Chatterjee got support from other quarters. The Samajwadi Party asked him to stay on, saying he was “the representative of the entire House”, and the Congress indicated that it too had no problem if he remained in office.

The BJP, on the other hand, said the tussle only showed the “contradictions within” the CPM and it was up to the Speaker and his party to decide on his continuance in office.

Sources in the CPM said the Speaker’s insistence to continue will now be discussed at the party’s Central Committee meeting in New Delhi on July 19. This came amid reports that Chatterjee had written a letter to CPM general secretary Prakash Karat, indicating his unwillingness to resign and his inability to vote along with the BJP during the July 22 trust vote. He is also learnt to have conveyed to the party leadership that if made to go, he will also quit as MP.

Asked about the letter by Chatterjee, Karat said “we don’t write letters.” But a senior CPM politburo member, contacted by The Indian Express, said the party had received the letter. He would not divulge the details, saying it was an internal organisational matter.

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