Kolkata, January 12
Veteran Marxist leader Jyoti Basu today asserted that he was not in the race for Bharat Ratna.
“I am not in the race for the country’s highest award,” Basu told the CPM mouthpiece Ganashakti.
Basu said since the time when the party disapproved Padmabhushan award for EMS Namboodiripad, the CPM had been maintaining the old stand of not accepting any such official title.
New Delhi: The CPM on Saturday put cold water on suggestions for Bharat Ratna to veteran Marxist Jyoti Basu, saying the party does not accept state awards.
“It is not a practice of our leaders to accept state awards,” CPM sources said here when asked for comments on reports suggesting Basu’s name for the top civilian award.
The sources said during the tenure of P.V. Narasimha Rao as the Prime Minister, the government had offered Padma Vibhushan to former CPM general secretary and veteran freedom fighter E.M.S. Namoodiripad.
The party had turned down the offer even at that time, they said, adding that it has never been the practice to formally ask for such awards.
The name of the Marxist leader cropped up after senior BJP leader L.K. Advani wrote a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recommending that former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee be given Bharat Ratna.
“When the name of Atal Bihari Vajpayee came up for Bharat Ratna, there is nothing wrong in the name of Jyoti Basu. He is also a great leader of the country”, senior Congress leader Veerappa Moily said yesterday.
RJD chief and Railway Minister Lalu Prasad also supported the nomination of Basu, who holds the record of India’s longest serving Chief Minister. Basu headed the Left Front government in West Bengal from 1977
till 2000.
As the controversy continued, the name of DMK supremo and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi has also come up.
Lucknow: Taking advantage of the mail from different parties arriving at the PMO demanding Bharat Ratna for their leaders, BSP supremo today also shot off a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh demanding the highest civilian award be conferred on her party founder and Dalit ideologue
Kanshiram.
In the letter, she has drawn the attention of the Prime Minister to the contribution of Kanshiram towards “raising political and social consciousness among crores of Dalits, marginalised and backward people who had been exploited for thousands of years due to their caste”.
Mayawati put forward her claim a day after CPM presented the case of party patriarch and longest serving Chief Minister Jyoti Basu for Bharat Ratna.
The tone for demanding Bharat Ratna was set by Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha L.K. Advani when he shot off a much-publicised missive to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh urging him to consider former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s name for the award.
— TNS, Agencies
