With Partha Chatterjee being stripped of his party responsibilities in West Bengal’s ruling Trinamool Congress soon after being removal of his ministerial portfolios, the post of Secretary General held by him had become defunct.
Although the party leadership got the replacement of Chatterjee as the editor of the party’s organ in Bengali, ‘Jago Bangla’ (‘Wake up Bengal’) within a couple of hours after Chatterjee was removed from that post as well, a similar initiative has not been mooted for the post of Secretary General. Trinamool’s Rajya Sabha member, Sukhendu Sekhar Roy has been designated as the new editor of ‘Jago Bangla’.
“It has been decided at the disciplinary committee meeting on Wednesday that no one will be appointed as the new Secretary General of the party as of now. The proposal was mooted by our national General Secretary, Abhishek Banerjee himself and the proposal was overwhelmingly accepted by the other members of the committee. So, it can be well inferred that the post of party Secretary General as abolished for the time being,” said a veteran leader and a senior member of the state cabinet, who refused to be named.
He also said that the post of Secretary General was specially created for Chatterjee at the insistence of Chief Minister, Mamata Banerjee, who wanted him to hold a senior position in the party as well which sounds somewhat parallel with the post of national General Secretary.
“Generally, in the Indian political system, there is no political party which has both the post of national General Secretary and Secretary General. Anyway, the post has become defunct as of now with the exit of that person for whom it was created,” the senior party leader said.
However, he added that it is yet to be decided whether additional members would be included in the party’s national Working Committee and Disciplinary Committee, from which Chatterjee has also been removed too.
