Former West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee. File.
| Photo Credit: PTI
Former West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, who passed away on Thursday (August 8, 2024), had little personal savings and gave all his salary earned as Chief Minister to his party, the CPI(M), the late leader’s close aide and party colleague Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya said.
Mr. Bikash, the former Kolkata Mayor, was the election agent of Mr. Bhattacharjee when he contested from the Jadavpur Assembly seat from 1987 to 2011. He said the CPI(M) leader survived on a portion of his salary that the party gave him. “It is his wife Meera Bhattacharjee who was the main contributor to the family,” he told The Hindu.
Recalling the Singur agitation that was a turning point for the Left front government and politics in Bengal, Mr. Bikash said at the height of the protests against the Tata Motors small car factory, Mr. Bhattacharjee was advised by many to use police against the Opposition leaders protesting in Singur, but he was against it.
“I told Buddha da to leave it to the police, but he said that the Leader of Opposition [Mamata Banerjee] staging the demonstration was a responsible person. His gesture of goodness, however, was not reciprocated upon and Tata Motors were forced to leave Singur,” Mr. Bikash said.
The former Rajya Sabha MP said he had almost six decades of association with the former Chief Minister and said that the setback in Singur “broke his heart” and the State never recovered from the anti-industry image. Tata Motors moved its factory from Singur to Sanand in Gujarat in 2008, during the last term of the Left Front government.
While the Opposition parties have often accused Mr. Bhattacharjee, Chief Minister from 2000 to 2011, of forcible land acquisition, Mr. Bikash said when the Calcutta High Court directed eviction of squatters from a railway land in Kolkata’s Lake Garden area, the leader promptly allocated 10 acres of prime land designated for an IT park at Nonadanga for their rehabilitation.
Mr. Bhattacharjee shunned public limelight and always maintained a very low profile, recalled Mr. Bikash. “Once a monk of the Ramakrishna Mission was hospitalised and wanted to meet him. He declined saying that if he visits the hospital other patients will be inconvenienced,” he said. Even when he was not keeping well, he felt uncomfortable in availing VIP facilities at hospitals in the city.
Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee (1944-2024)
A young Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee.
Communist veterans Harkishan Singh Surjeet, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and Jyoti Basu at a Polit Bureau meeting in New Delhi on May 17, 2001.
Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee with Atal Bihari Vajpayee when he was the Prime Minister.
In this October 2002 picture, West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee is seen with cricketer Sourav Ganguly at the inauguration of a State Government housing complex named after Saurav, in Kolkata.
The then Prime Minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina with Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee after paying floral tributes to former West Bengal Chief Minister and Communist veteran leader Jyoti Basu, at the State Assembly, in Kolkata on January 19, 2010.
Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee with M. Karunanidhi at the latter’s residence in Chennai on August 13, 2006. Both of them were Chief Ministers then.
West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacherjee felicitates legendary singer and Padma Bhushan awardee Manna Dey at an event organised in Kolkata on January 21, 2008 by the Association of Professional Performing Singers, West Bengal, supported by the Kolkata Municipal Corporation and Bengal Shelter.
Lord Swaraj Paul Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee at Writers’ Buildings in Kolkata on April 8, 2008.
The then West Bengal Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi flanked by Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee (right), and Mamata Bannerjee at a press conference at Raj Bhavan in Kolkata on September 7, 2008. The State Government and Trinamool Congress came to a consensus on the controversial farmland acquisition issue for the Tata Motors car project at Singur. The issue was one of the reasons behind Left Front’s loss in West Bengal.
The then Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar and Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee at Jyoti Basu’s funeral in Kolkata on January 19, 2010.
Buddhadeb Bhattacherjee addresses a massive rally in Kolkata on February 13, 2011 at the launch of the Left Front campaign for the upcoming elections to the State Assembly.
Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee paying tributes to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, one of the greatest authors in Kolkata, on May 14, 2014.
Lal Salam: Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee offering his last respects to CPI(M) leader Benoy Konar at State’s Party headquarters in Kolkata on September 15, 2014.
The then Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi and Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee during a campaign rally for Congress-Left candidate Deepa Dasmunshi in Kolkata for the 2016 West Bengal Assembly elections.
In this July 2023 picture, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee being discharged from a city hospital after underging treatment for 11 days.
Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee during a CPI(M)‘s State committee meeting in Kolkata. He was the last of the great Communist leaders from West Bengal, a quintessential Bhadralok, who loved to read poetry, Kafka and Marquez.
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“It was Buddha da who stood by me when I declined the offer to be appointed judge at the Calcutta High Court in 1994 and in 2005 nominated me as the Left Front candidate for the Mayor of Kolkata Municipal Corporation,” he said.
Describing Mr. Bhattacharjee as a “rare gem of a politician” who always stood by his ideals, Mr. Bikash said that his simplicity and honesty is something that will inspire generations to come.
