Jyoti Basu: The true leader

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2010-01-25/india/28139100_1_jyoti-basu-chief-minister-basu-jyoti-babu

yoti Basu's Speech on 19th congress

http://www.jyotibasu.net/?q=node/27

A barrister by profession, Basu also influenced his party to give outside support to the Congress-led UPA government at the Centre in 2004. He is survived by son, Chandan, daughter-in-law and three grandchildren. His wife Kamal had died seven years ago.

'Comrade' Basu almost became the Prime Minister after the 1996 Lok Sabha elections at the head of a Centre-Left coalition but missed the crown because his CPI-M rejected the offer saying it did not want to participate in the government in which it did not have a majority. Basu himself famously said later that his party's decision was a 'historic blunder.'

A pall of gloom descended in Left front-ruled West Bengal after the news of Basu's death spread while political leaders across the spectrum hailed the Marxist patriarch as a 'great son of India'. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said Basu was a powerful regional voice in the national political scene.

The charismatic 95-year-old Basu fondly called Jyoti Babu, one of the tallest leaders of the Communist movement who strode the political scene like a colossus for over six decades, breathed his last at 11:47 am at the AMRI Hospital where he was admitted with a pneumonia attack on January one, 2010.

BIRTH CENTENARY OF COMRADE JYOTI BASU STARTS ON AND FROM 8TH JULY, 2013 TO 8THJULY, 2014