The last speech of Suranjit

Veteran politician Suranjit Sengupta had an exquisite and exceptional style of delivering speech. In conversation, he had a unique style as he frequently demonstrated in talk shows.

With commendable communication skills in English, Sanskrit, Hindi and Urdu, he could easily draw attention of the audience for his style and humour in presentation.

Suranjit, for the last time, spoke in the parliament on January 29. Nobody could imagine that would be his last speech in the House. On that day, the veteran parliamentarian spoke on a point of order on formation of the next Election Commission.

"The constitution empowers only the president to form the Election Commission, and none can oppose his decision," he told the parliament on January 29.

Pointing to the “contradictory remarks” of BNP leaders on the search committee, Suranjit had said, “The secretary general of BNP rejected the search committee while a top leader of BNP said he was optimistic about a positive outcome from the search committee.”

He called upon the BNP leaders to shun the path of creating confusion about the constitutional process and cooperate with the committee to form a strong EC.

Lambasting United Nations, Suranjit strongly disagreed with the UN on its interest in the formation process of EC saying that it had no right to do so.

"If they have any views on formation of the new Election Commission, they can give those through the diplomatic channel," he had said, referring to the letter of UN's Resident Coordinator to the foreign ministry seeking an appointment with President Abdul Hamid to hold talks on the formation of the new commission.