By IANS,
Kolkata : The opposition Left Front (LF) Friday demanded that the West Bengal government reverse its move to scrap the renaming of North 24 Parganas district’s Rajarhat New Town after Marxist icon Jyoti Basu and threatened to take the issue to the governor.
“The move to revoke the name is unacceptable and we demand the announcement to do so be immediately withdrawn. Jyoti Basu has been the longest serving chief minister in the country. The step to scrap the renaming is a dishonour to him,” said LF Chairman Biman Bose.
An LF delegation will submit a memorandum of protest against the government’s decision to Governor M.K. Narayanan, Bose said.
He urged the people to join in the protest and said the alliance will take to the streets in protest.
The Trinamool Congress-run government has decided not to rename the posh satellite township of Rajarhat New Town as Jyoti Basu Nagar after former chief minister and Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) patriarch Jyoti Basu.
The renaming proposal was part of the New Town Kolkata Development Authority (Amendment) Bill, 2010, passed in the assembly during the Left Front regime.
The revision comes after Narayanan sought the Mamata Banerjee-led government’s opinion on some of the bills passed during the fag end of the erstwhile government.
Former state housing minister and CPI-M leader Gautam Deb Thursday had termed the move as petty.
“The bill was unanimously passed in the assembly on March 23. This is a courtesy which we and the people of Bengal expect from her (Banerjee) on the issue of renaming Rajarhat Township,” opposition leader Surjya Kanta Mishra said earlier.
One of the nine founding politburo members of the CPI-M, Basu was at the helm of affairs in West Bengal for over 23 years from 1977 – the longest chief ministerial tenure in India.
He voluntarily stepped down in 2000 due to ill health.
Basu almost became India’s prime minister in 1996 as the head of the United Front government. But the CPI-M vetoed the proposal, and he later dubbed the party’s decision a “historical blunder”.