Leaders cross party lines to honour Basu

Jan 27, 2010

New Delhi, Jan. 27: The condolence gathering organised in memory of veteran CPI(M) leader Jyoti Basu by major Left party, witnessed leaders cutting across party lines, including the Congress, SP, AIADMK, DMK, JD(U), BJD, National Conference, Akali Dal, coming together and hailing Basu as a leader who would have impacted a turn in political events if he had become Prime Minister of the ruling United Front government in 1996.

“Had Basu become the Prime Minister, the turn in political events would have been different today” — such was the refrain of speeches by several leaders, including SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, Akali Dal leader and former Lok Sabha Deputy Speaker S.S. Atwal and Union minister and National Conference chief Farooq Abdullah. Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee said the departed Marxist leader had shown the way as to how to run a coalition government way back in late 1960s. “In a coalition, the leader of a minority party can lead a government. It is not necessary that only the majority party can lead.”
“A coalition government has to be run in accordance with the consensus emerging out of the political parties which are part of the coalition. These were issues which Basu raised as early as in 1969 when he was the deputy CM in West Bengal’s United Front government,” Mr Mukherjee said.

age correspondent

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/1563" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd></li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-650074d93f988517a23cc2aad1973866" value="form-650074d93f988517a23cc2aad1973866" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="81072632" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>