CPM Politburo and the erstwhile Left Front need to look retrospectively into the India's parliamentary history, to decide whether India have been benefited if Jyoti Basu was allowed to take India' leadership as the prime minister ?
Former CBI director and Bengal DGP Arun Prosad Mukherjee has revealed in his autobiography,"Unknown Facets of Rajiv Gandhi, Jyoti Basu, Indrajit Gupta" , that Rajiv Gandhi had wanted Jyoti Basu to become the Prime Minister and had pleaded with him twice during the politically tumultuous times of 1990 and 1991.
Mukherjee was special secretary, home ministry, in October 1990 when Rajiv informally asked him to arrange a meeting with Basu, says the book. The communist leader said it was not his call and only the party's central committee and Politburo could take such a decision. CPM vetoed it and Chandrashekhar — Rajiv's third choice — became PM with Congress support.
In 1991, when Chandrashekhar turned out to be a failure, Rajiv again approached Basu but he declined and referred the matter to his party leadership. Mukherjee writes that he took Rajiv's emissary for a meeting with senior CPM leaders at former MP Biplab Dasgupta's house. "But my worst conjecture proved right ... and thus ended the second opportunity of putting up the Left Front's best foot forward in the larger interest of Bengal."
Lastly in 1996, after the fall of 13-day-old Vajpayee govt, United Front asks Basu to be PM. Yet again, CPM said big no.
Former Lok Sabha Speaker and CPM leader Somnath Chatterjee, who was expelled from the party's for refusing to step down (US nuclear agreement) didn't know of it either. "It (not allowing Basu to become PM) was the weirdest example of democratic centralism. I respectfully agree with Jyoti-babu's 'historic blunder' comment. I wish the blunder hadn't been committed and history would have been written differently. Look what's happened to the party now — it's become politically irrelevant."
Chatterjee agreed with Mukherjee's remark in his book that the country's "murky political and administrative ethos" then would have been transformed with Basu at the helm.
The writer Mukherjee said: "All three (Gandhi, Basu and Gupta) were different personalities. Jyoti Basu was firm, Rajiv was extremely courteous while Indrajit Gupta was a straight-talker. But they trusted me and allowed me to speak my mind. They knew about my integrity."
About the "blunder" he said, "The CPM leadership refused to see reason and there was no way one could convince them." His writing is more explicit: "All the implications and finer points made out by me in favour of Jyoti Basu accepting Rajiv Gandhi's offer of prime ministership though presumably for a short period of 8-12 months went over the heads of Left Front leaders — thanks to their blinkered vision."
INDIA HONEST wonders, if after two decades, do the party still deny, that it was a blunder, refusing Jyoti Basu to take command as the prime minister of India ?