Dhaka, Jan 17 (Inditop.com) Bangladesh Prime minister Sheikh Hasina may visit Kolkata to attend the last rites of Communist patriarch and former West Bengal chief minister Jyoti Basu who passed away Sunday, her press aide announced.
Abdul Kalam Azad, her press secretary, made the announcement here.
Bangladesh’s Leader of Opposition Khaleda Zia also conveyed her condolences during a press meet she held Sunday.
Hasina, who visited New Delhi earlier this week, was originally scheduled to be in Kolkata and her itinerary had included a visit to the hospital where the ailing Basu was admitted.
The Kolkata schedule and a visit to Santiniketan, where poet laureate Rabindranath Tagore had set up his Viswa Bharati University, were cancelled.
Basu, who passed away in Kolkata Sunday at age 95, was critically ill during Hasina’s Jan 10-13 India tour. She had voiced her concern over his deteriorating health condition. The Marxist patriarch had ruled West Bengal as chief minister for 23 long years.
“I wanted to see him during my trip to India but could not make it,” Hasina had told journalists in New Delhi at the end of her visit.
Hasina’s respect for Basu was evident in a letter she had written to the Communist patriarch on Feb 4, 2009 – four weeks after she became prime minister following the Awami League-led coalition’s landslide victory in the parliamentary elections.
She had sought Basu’s blessings for her second tenure as Bangladesh prime minister.
“Bless me so that we can live up to the expectation of people and fulfil the responsibilities entrusted on us, honour the verdict of the people and truly work for developing my country as the Shonar Bangla (Golden Bangladesh),” Hasina had written to Basu.
Hasina had also expressed concern over the failing health of Basu. “I am quite worried to know that you are ill. I wish you quick recovery and am looking forward to meet you in future,” she had added.
She had also expressed confidence that the friendship between India and Bangladesh would be strengthened in the coming days.
Hasina’s letter had in fact been in response to Basu’s congratulations to her after the Awami League-led coalition’s victory.
Basu had congratulated Hasina and the Awami League and conveyed his good wishes for the people of Bangladesh.
“I knew late Mujibur Rahman (Bangabadhu and father of Hasina) from the days when he was involved in student organisations and I had very cordial relations with him,” the nonagenarian leader had said.
“She (Hasina) called on me at my residence when she came on a visit to India,” he had said, recalling her tour to Kolkata as the leader of the opposition in Bangladesh in 2006.
Basu, as chief minister of West Bengal, had played an instrumental role during Hasina’s visit to India during her first term in 1996, when Delhi and Dhaka had signed the treaty for sharing of water of Ganga.
The then Indian external affairs minister I.K. Gujral had lauded the role played by Basu in a suo motu statement in the Indian Parliament on Dec 12, 1996. Gujral put on record the appreciation of Indian government for the “very constructive role played by the chief minister of West Bengal and his cabinet colleagues in bringing about an improved atmosphere in which the treaty between India and Bangladesh has become possible.”
Basu had in 1999 travelled to Dhaka with the then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee during the inauguration of the bus service between Kolkata and Dhaka.
A few months after taking over as prime minister, Hasina had launched an initiative to turn Basu’s ancestral house at Barodi in Narayanganj district of Bangladesh into a museum and library. In July 2009, she sent the Awami League MP Obaidul Quader to survey the house and report to her so that a detailed plan could be chalked out.
