Sena hails Somnath for showing ‘courage of conviction’

Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee on Friday received support from an unexpected quarter with the Shiv Sena lauding...

Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee on Friday received support from an unexpected quarter with the Shiv Sena lauding him for showing “courage of conviction” in the face-off with the CPM leadership.

“We have ideological differences with Somnath Chatterjee but he has commanded respect by showing courage by going by his conscience,” Sena chief Bal Thackeray said in an editorial in party mouthpiece Saamna.

On Chatterjee’s defiance of the CPM, which expelled him from the party for not quitting the Speaker’s post, he said the 80-year-old veteran stuck to a principled stand disapproving of the Left voting along with the BJP in a bid to topple the UPA Government.

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“When they failed to dislodge the Manmohan Singh Government and make BSP leader Mayawati the prime minister, the CPM bosses took out their anger on Chatterjee and expelled him,” Thackeray said, adding that Chatterjee matched Jyoti Basu and Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee in stature.

“Chatterjee,” he said, “preferred political martyrdom for his secular ideoology to toeing the party line that his conscience did not permit”.

Referring to MPs who defied party whips to favour the UPA Government in Tuesday’s trust vote, the Sena supremo said such MPs were bound to face public backlash.