When 17 Left parties – including the Communist Party of India (Marxist) – come together at the rally in Kolkata’s Brigade Parade Grounds on February 3, there will be something very different this time. And heartbreakingly so, for millions of Left supporters.
For the first time in memory, former West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee won’t be attending the Left Front’s “Brigade” rally.
Bhattacharjee, suffering from Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and with deteriorating vision, hasn’t been active in politics for several months now. A public meeting at the Maidan – involves air pollution issues – and it is therefore completely ruled out for him health-wise, said a senior CPI-M leader. But it makes a lot of difference to the die-hard Left supporters for whom Bhattacharjee’s presence, his fiery speeches, his presentation of a vision for a bright future of West Bengal has been hugely inspiring for decades. At the peak of its power, the Left Front Brigade rallies had two main stars from Bengal – Jyoti Basu and Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee.
Though leaders such as Prakash Karat and Sitaram Yechury have been speakers for many Brigade rallies, for the ordinary Left supporter visiting the rally from various parts of the state, the two star leaders from Bengal — Basu and Bhattacharjee — have been the main attraction. And Bhattacharjee has been popular especially among the urban supporters and among the younger generation.
As chief minister Bhattacharjee was way more popular than most speakers – his vision for Bengal’s resurgence in industries presented before Bengal’s youth has been etched into the minds of every die-hard Left supporter.
A politician who leads a simple life in a tiny flat on Palm Avenue with his wife and daughter along with his books, Bhattacharjee has always exemplified a lifestyle that even some of the most well-known Left leaders haven’t been able to achieve. And therefore, a Left Front rally without Bhattacharjee will certainly be different.
Even after the Left Front was no longer in power in Bengal since 2011, Bhattacharjee has been a speaker at the party’s Brigade rallies. He was a key speaker even at the last Brigade meeting of the CPI-M on 27 December 2017 on the opening day of its four-day plenum in the state. In his speech, he had blamed the ruling Trinamool Congress for the economic condition of the state. He had held the ruling party responsible for lack of jobs and for no new business or industries being set up in the state. In the run up to the 2016 Assembly elections, he raised a powerful slogan to oust the Trinamool Congress from West Bengal and to uproot the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from the country.
Earlier, he had been a speaker even in the party’s March rally in the same year.
However, due to his poor health, Bhattacharjee has stepped down from the key positions in the party that he had been holding, including the politburo. He has been advised to speak less and to not walk much. He hasn’t even visited the CPI-M’s party office in Kolkata’s Alimuddin Street for several months now.
The speakers at the Brigade rally on February 3 will include general secretaries of all the 17 Left parties, apart from the CPI-M’s Md Salim, Surjya Kanta Mishra and Debalina Hembram, and youth leader Kanhaiya Kumar, who is likely to contest the Lok Sabha elections from Bihar’s Begusarai as a CPI candidate. According to the CPI leadership, actor Shabana Azmi and Prakash Ambedkar, grandson of B R Ambedkar, have also been invited to the rally.
