Senior Bengal Minister Subrata Mukherjee died at a government hospital in state capital Kolkata on Thursday night, following a cardiac arrest. He was 75.
Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who rushed to the hospital soon after the news broke, described Subrata’s demise as a “huge loss” to her.
“I have seen a lot of tragedies in life but this is too big a loss. Subratada was likely to be discharged from the hospital on Friday. He suffered cardiac arrest and passed away,” Mamata told the media.
Subrata, Bengal’s Panchayat Minister, was undergoing treatment at SSKM Hospital in southern Kolkata after he recently suffered a massive heart attack.
A former Mayor of Kolkata, Subrata began his political career with the student wing of the Congress in the late 1960s. In the early 70s, he became one of the youngest Ministers in then Bengal Chief Minister Siddhartha Sankar Ray’s government at the age of 26.
He quit the Congress and joined Mamata’s Trinamool Congress in 1999. A year later, he was made the Mayor of Kolkata. He had briefly quit the Trinamool Congress but returned soon.
In May this year, Subrata and two other Trinamool Congress leaders were arrested by India’s Central Bureau of Investigation for their alleged involvement in a corruption case, the Narada scandal. The three were released on bail a few days later.
The Narada scandal was actually a sting operation carried out by a journalist that caught on tape several ministers and senior officials of the Mamata government accepting cash bribes in exchange for doling out favours to a private firm looking to set up business in Bengal.
(Source: UNB)
