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“I have accepted the proposal and informed Chidambaram about that,” said Chatterjee, who was expelled from his party CPM after he refused to step down as Speaker of the Lok Sabha during the first UPA government.
Chatterjee now stays at Shantiniketan.
The National Integration Council, with 141 members, is headed by the prime minister. Ten Union ministers and all chief ministers, heads of political parties, eminent personalities, to name a few, are members of the Council.
With his nod now, Chatterjee now joins the ranks of Mamata Banerjee and Prakash Karat, who are co-members of the Council.
Constituted in 1962 by the then prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, the Council has met 13 times since then; the last time it met was on August 31, 2005.
The second UPA government had offered Chatterjee several posts, including governorship and ambassadorship and even a nominated membership of the Rajya Sabha but the former Speaker turned them down saying he was not interested in accepting any post of profit as he did not want to work under anybody.
Chatterjee said he accepted the latest offer since it did not carry any financial benefit with it. “Earlier, I did not accept any of those posts as they carried pecuniary benefits. But this membership has no frills, no perks nor any perquisites. It is supposed to meet once in a year. That is why I have accepted it. Nobody can say Somnath accepted this post for money,” the former Speaker said.
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