Former West Bengal Chief Minister, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, who was the second and the last CM of the Left regime in West Bengal, died at his residence at Palm Avenue in South Kolkata on Thursday morning. He was 80.
His son Suchetan Bhattacharjee has confirmed the demise of his father. Bhattacharjee started falling sick after having breakfast, shortly after which he passed away, his son said. Besides Suchetan, he is survived by his wife Mira Bhattacharjee. He was the Chief Minister of West Bengal from 2000 to 2011, succeeding the nonagenarian India Marxist and the longest-serving Chief Minister of West Bengal, Late Jyoti Basu.
In the 2011 West Bengal Assembly elections, when the Trinamool Congress-ruled and Mamata Banerjee-led government came to power in West Bengal, ending the 34-year Left Front regime in the state, Bhattacharjee himself was defeated from the Jadavpur Assembly constituency in South 24 Parganas, where from he was elected for four consecutive terms.
The 2011 West Bengal Assembly election was his last appearance in the electoral battle. After that, he restricted himself to internal party activities besides getting more engrossed in his literary preoccupations, a mark of this former Chief Minister. He was always revered for his simple lifestyle in a two-bedroom flat at Palm Avenue. For the last couple of years, he had been suffering from a number of physical ailments especially because of his chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) problems for which he had to be hospitalised a number of times.
The last time he was admitted to hospital was on July 29 last year. However, he recovered and returned home on August 9. His team of doctors has always complained that even during his hospitalisation period, the former Chief Minister always insisted on early discharge. Finally, he breathed his last at the same two-bedroom flat at Palm Avenue, his abode of peace for last so many years. In 2022, the Union government recommended his name for Padma Bhushan, which he refused. Nephew of the legendary revolutionary poet Sukanta Bhattacharjee, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee walked against his party lines in the closing days of his ministership to promote industrialisation in West Bengal. His death marks the end of an era in the history of Indian politics.