CALCUTTA, Jan 21: Veteran Marxist leader and West Bengal Chief Minister, Jyoti Basu, has gone one step ahead. He has now made official his desire to become Prime Minister.Making it official means, in the CPI(M) parlance, announcing it in a party forum. Basu did so in an interview published today in the party's Bengali organ, Ganashakti.``I cannot be a candidate. It is for the United Front and my party to decide it,'' he said replying to a question on whether he was willing to become Prime Minister. ``If I am asked to shoulder the responsibility (of the Prime Minister), I am prepared to do it, provided my health permits it. I have never shirked any responsibility in the 50 years of my political life,'' the 84-year-old leader added.It is no secret that Basu has been fighting a battle within the party to establish his political line that time has come for the CPI(M) to join an anti-Congress and anti-BJP government at the Centre. He kick-started a controversy when he called the party's decision not to join the Deve Gowda government in June, 1996 a ``historic blunder''.Subsequently, he was forced to call it a ``closed chapter'' when a section of the party leadership resented his public criticism of the party line. During the recent organisational elections of the party unit in West Bengal, Basu's line came under attack from hardliners. Most of the members in the State secretariat of the party, like Anil Biswas, Biman Bose and Nirupam Sen, are known to be hostile to Basu's line on joining a government at the Centre. Today's interview in the party paper and the display it was given on the front page show a change of heart and also of strategy. This is significant because for quite some time after the controversy over Basu's remark on the party decision, Ganashakti blacked out the debate from its pages.Basu seems to have won the first round in his battle. He has forced the issue to be reopened within the party and outside. Even the known critics of his line in the party central committee now say that it will discuss the issue again after the elections.But some party leaders here have actually jumped the gun, not wanting to wait till the elections are over. Somnath Chatterjee, the leader of the CPI(M) in the last Lok Sabha, for instance, told a public meeting recently that the party should launch the poll campaign projecting Basu as a prime ministerial candidate. That is not something the party is prepared to do even now. The party's campaign literature and poll graffiti have, therefore, carefully avoided any reference to the issue. But Basu himself has reiterated his line that the party should not repeat the mistake of 1996 and join the government in Delhi, should another opportunity arise.The party rank and file is, however, not convinced that another opportunity will come Basu's way after these elections. Basu himself sounded less than confident in the interview on the possibility of the United Front making it another time.
