Communist Patriarch and former West Bengal chief minister Jyoti Basu’s 98th birth anniversary was celebrated across the state on Saturday. Among those who paid floral tributes in the Assembly were Speaker Biman Bandopadhyay, Industries Minister Partha Chatterjee, the former Speaker H.A. Halim, and Sitaram Yechury, member of the Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist).
A non-governmental organisation Pather Panchali, which held annual celebrations on this day at Basu’s residence Indira Bhavan when he was alive, organised a small function at the venue. Former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, Forward Bloc state secretary Ashok Ghosh, other political leaders and a large number of schoolchildren took part. Chatterjee demanded that Indira Bhavan, where Basu spent the last two decades of his life, be turned into a museum in his memory.
Born July 8, 1914, in Kolkata to a wealthy family, Basu took to communism in London. On his return to India, he joined the undivided Communist Party of India (CPI) and plunged into the Left movement. Basu made his debut in electoral politics in 1946. He was elected to the state assembly 11 times, losing only once – in the hugely controversial 1972 elections.
After the CPI split in 1964, he joined the CPI(M) and was elected to its first central committee and politburo. He was West Bengal chief minister from 1977 until he retired in late 2000 due to ill health.
