Date:12/04/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/04/12/stories/2008041259241300.htm

National

Basu: I should not have said it

Marcus Dam

KOLKATA: Veteran Marxist leader Jyoti Basu admitted on Friday that his recent utterances to the media that Subhas Chakraborty, senior party leader and West Bengal Transport Minister, be accommodated in both the Central Committee and the State Secretariat of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) went “against party discipline.”

“What I have said about Subhas [to the media] is against party discipline. I should not have said it,” the nonagenarian leader said on his way to a meeting of the CPI(M) State Secretariat.

“I can say [what I did] within the party, but not outside,” said Mr. Basu whose request to be relieved of his responsibilities in the CPI(M) Polit Bureau on grounds of health was accepted by the party leadership at the recent 19th Congress of the CPI(M) in Coimbatore.

Mr. Basu asked newspersons to see that his remarks were telecast and all their colleagues be informed.

After emerging from the State Secretariat meeting, Mr. Basu once again said that expressing his views to the media on Mr Chakraborty was “not right” from the perspective of “party discipline and rules.”

“I have told the State Secretariat so,” he added.