'Jyoti Basu was one of the foremost Communist revolutionaries': Brinda Karat

Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) leader Brinda Karat on Monday recalled the unforgettable contributions of party patriarch Jyoti Basu, the longest-serving Chief Minister of any state in the country.

Karat said Jyoti Basu was one of the foremost Communist revolutionaries that Asia and indeed the world probably has seen because he epitomized not only the ideological commitment to the cause of the working people.

"But in his practice of so many decades of devotion and sacrifice for the work of the people, he showed how parliamentary politics...and the energy of that can be used for the working people," said Karat.

"And I think, it was that combination because people know him as the Chief Minister, but Jyoti Basu was also a great trade unionist. He had also been the Secretary of the party and he combined in his person the best qualities that we miss so much today when we look at Indian politics," she added, while talking to the media on the occasion of the birth centenary of Jyoti Basu.

Jyoti Basu served as the Chief Minister of West Bengal from 1977 to 2000, making him the longest-serving Chief Minister of any state of India. Basu was a member of the CPI (M) Politburo from the time of the party's founding in 1964 until 2008.

From 2008 until his death in 2010, he remained a permanent invitee to the central committee of the party.