He won the controversial 1972 election as well, following which he was sworn-in as a junior minister in the SS Ray government in all departments held by the chief minister. Mukherjee became a Congress MLA at the age of 25 in 1971. He was the only minister in the state’s last Congress government who again became a minister after the fall of the Left’s three and a half decade rule.īorn in 1946, Mukherjee rose as a leader of the Congress’ student wing, Chhatra Parishad, during one of the most-turbulent periods in Bengal’s history - the Naxalite uprising in the late 1960s and the early 1970, when parts of the state, including the capital city of Calcutta, were thrown into chaos in a multi-corner armed conflict.Īt that time, the Naxalites targeted the Congress, the CPI(M) and police and paramilitary forces, the CPI(M) fought both the Maoists and the Congress, and the Congress often took the help of the police and paramilitary forces to crush the Naxalite party, CPI(ML)’s organisation, as well as those of the CPI(M).

But Subrata Mukherjee, who died at a Calcutta hospital on Thursday night at the age of 75, was an exception. Siddhartha Sankar Ray, the last Congress chief minister, never won an election again. None of the Bengal Congress leaders who had a role in the state’s last Congress government (1972-77) that served during the Emergency, managed to remain relevant in the state’s politics after the Left Front government stormed to power to rule for a continuous stretch of 34 years till 2011.

Half life rule 34