Jyoti Basu

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - Cite This Source

Jyoti Basu (জ্যোতি বসু) (born July 8, 1914) is a Communist politician from West Bengal, India. Basu is a Politburo member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), and, as the Chief Minister of West Bengal from 1977-2000, was India's longest-serving Chief Minister.

Background

Basu was the son of a wealthy doctor, born into an upper middle-class Bengali family in Calcutta. His father, Nishikanta Basu, hailed from the village of Barodi in Dhaka District, East Bengal (now in Bangladesh). He got his school education at St. Xavier's Collegiate School. He graduated from Presidency College with an honours degree from the Art Faculty in 1935, and subsequently travelled to London to study law. He was introduced to the Communist Party of Great Britain through Bhupesh Gupta.

Basu returned to India in 1940 after qualifying for the Bar and became a whole-timer of the Communist Party of India. In 1944 Basu became involved in trade union activities. CPI delegated him to work amongst the railway labourers. When B.N. Railway Workers Union and B.D. Rail Road Workers Union merged Basu became the general secretary of the union.

Political career

Basu was elected to the Bengal Legislative Assembly in 1946, contesting the Railway constituency. When the Communist Party of India split in 1964, Basu became a prominent leader of the new Communist Party of India (Marxist). In 1967 and 1969, Basu became Deputy Chief Minister of West Bengal in the United Front governments.

Between June 21, 1977 and November 6, 2000, Basu served as the Chief Minister of West Bengal for the Left Front government. In 1997 Jyoti Basu seemed all set to be the consensus leader of the United Front for the post of Prime Minister of India. However, the CPI(M) politburo decided not to participate in the government, a decision that Jyoti Basu later termed a historic blunder. H.D. Deve Gowda from the Janata Dal instead became Prime Minister.

Basu resigned from the Chief Ministership of West Bengal in 2000 for health reasons and was succeeded by fellow CPI(M) politician Buddhadeb Bhattacharya. As of 2006, Basu holds the record for the longest-serving Chief Minister in Indian political history.

The 18th congress of CPI(M), held in Delhi in 2005, re-elected Basu to its politburo. On September 13 2006, Basu entreated the CPI(M) to allow his retirement due to his age, but was turned down. General Secretary Prakash Karat said that the party wanted Basu to continue until its 2008 congress, at which point it would reconsider.

Controversies

In January 2006 the Supreme Court of India issued notices to Basu and others in connection with land allotments in Salt Lake.

References

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia © 2001-2006 Wikipedia contributors (Disclaimer)
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Last updated on Thursday February 21, 2008 at 00:41:51 PST (GMT -0800)
View this article at Wikipedia.org - Edit this article at Wikipedia.org - Donate to the Wikimedia Foundation