A Mamata loyalist, the MLA from Behala West assembly constituency has served as the minister of commerce and industry, education and parliamentary affairs over the past two decades since 2001. He played an important role in Trinamool, especially after Mukul Roy Left the party in 2017. Partha-da has been the favorite person of the party members.
But on the day of his arrest, the party and its ranks distanced themselves from the troublemaker.
The origin of his downfall can be traced back to 2016 when he was made the Minister of Education. Chatterjee was embroiled in a controversy in 2019 when it spread that many job-seekers had paid bribes when the state government hired teachers and non-teaching staff in government schools. A five-member advisory panel was constituted to oversee the appointments of the school.
Chatterjee and Trinamool members ignored the agitation until the Calcutta High Court took note of the allegations in 2021. that year, bratya basu Replaced him as the Minister of Education. But Partha-da has not yet fallen from grace.
Chatterjee had a clean image unlike many of his associates arrested or accused in the Saradha scam and Narada tape leak. He was the decider of disputes within TMC and was tasked with talking to dissidents before a flurry of defections in 2020.
The cracks came to the fore as the heat of teacher recruitment increased. When the CBI questioned Chatterjee this June, TMC’s state secretary Kunal Ghosh He said the scam pertained to his tenure as education minister and not Basu’s tenure. Chatterjee said running the government is a “collective responsibility”.