KolkataOctober 18, 2025 07:25 AM IST
First published on: Oct 18, 2025 at 07:25 AM IST
Nearly seven years after parting ways with the Trinamool Congress (TMC), former West Bengal minister Sovan Chatterjee was on Friday appointed the chairperson of New Town Kolkata Development Authority (NKDA), in what is seen as the “first step” towards his return to the party.
Chatterjee, 61, the former mayor of Kolkata, will replace former chief secretary Alapan Bandopadhyay as the NKDA chief. The NKDA provides civic services for New Town, adjacent to Kolkata.
Sources said Sovan and his friend Baishakhi Banerjee had met Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee at Darjeeling’s Richmond Hill on Wednesday. Three weeks ago, he had a closed-door meeting with the chief minister’s nephew and TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee.
“We are expecting him (Sovan) to join the TMC before the Assembly elections due early next year. Sovan da has already expressed his desire to work in the Assembly election. He may also contest. He is most likely to be used by the party in an important role. This was almost finalised after Abhishek Banerjee met him at his residence during Durga Puja. His appointment as NKDA chairperson is the first step towards it,” a senior TMC leader said on condition of anonymity.
The meeting, which lasted for nearly 50 minutes, was also attended by Baishakhi Banerjee.
Baishakhi said Sovan’s return to active politics was only a matter of time.
Once a high-profile TMC leader and a close aide of the TMC supremo — one of the many West Bengal Congress leaders who had tagged along with Mamata Banerjee when she launched the TMC in 1998 — Chatterjee used to be affectionately called by the TMC supremo by his nickname “Kanon”. As differences with the CM crept in, he stepped down from the Cabinet and KMC in 2018 and joined the BJP in August 2019.
After his resignation, Firhad Hakim was given most of the responsibilities he had.
While Sovan wasn’t very active on the ground in his early days as a BJP leader, he became more visible after being appointed observer of the BJP’s Kolkata Zone in January 2021.
He was expecting to be fielded from Behala Purba, which he had won in 2011 and 2016 as a TMC MLA in the 2021 Assembly polls. After being denied ticket to contest, he and his associate Baishakhi Banerjee, another TMC defector, walked out of the BJP.
Last year, ahead of the martyrs’ rally, there was talk of Sovan Chatterjee’s return to the TMC. The speculation was triggered after senior TMC leaders Aroop Biswas and Kunal Ghosh visited his home in Kolkata’s Golpark area.
A senior TMC leader had then said, “Of late, Mamata Banerjee has not been happy with the working of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) or with the party’s organisation in Behala (a Kolkata suburb) from where Sovan has been twice elected MLA. Since then, we have been hearing that the CM now wants her once-trusted lieutenant to return and take responsibility for the party’s organisation in Behala.”