Sonia before Basu’s body on Tuesday

Calcutta, Jan. 20: The state funeral for Jyoti Basu yesterday has rekindled the debate within the CPM over the party’s earlier rejection of Delhi’s proposal to confer the Bharat Ratna on the leader.

When the offer for Bharat Ratna came during Manmohan Singh’s first term as Prime Minister, CPM general secretary Prakash Karat had said that communists did not accept such honours from the state. Basu himself had said he did not believe in government recognition.

But some CPM leaders felt differently today. “I think it should have been accepted as it would have been a national recognition of his stature. Jyotibabu had expressed his reservation because he knew the party would object to it. Since he never hankered after such honours, he avoided controversy,’’ said former MP Tarit Topdar.

Topdar and some others in the party had resented the leadership’s stand when the Centre sounded the state on the possible honour for Basu in 2007.

Subhas Chakraborty had openly favoured the acceptance of the honour. Somnath Chatterjee, then the Lok Sabha Speaker and part of the CPM, had supported him.

The same opinion has now resurfaced after the leadership climbed down from its “moral-ideological” high horse as the Bengal government proposed to the Centre a “military funeral” for Basu.

Basu’s body was carried to its final destination in an army gun carriage with the Tricolour draped around it.

“The Centre was right in honouring Jyotibabu and our acceptance of it was beyond question. The national flag is above all party flags,’’ said Topdar.

“We actually amended our historic blunder of 1996 by offering the national honour to Jyotibabu,” another CPM state committee member said, alluding to the party’s refusal to allow Basu to be Prime Minister in 1996.

The CPM state leadership today insisted that the propo-sal for Basu’s state funeral came from the Centre and that the party agreed to it after a “debate”.

“The Centre had informally sounded the state at the highest level about the army in-volvement as it was not sure whether we would accept it. We had a debate among ourselves on it as we had earlier refused to let him accept the Bharat Ratna,’’ said a CPM state secretariat member.

“But this time we agreed in view of Jyotibabu’s national stature and the public sentiments. The norms required the state government to write to the Centre proposing the state funeral and obtain its concurrence. The chief secretary did accordingly,” he added.

The state secretariat member indicated that the Bengal leadership’s “acceptance of the proposal” was aimed at underlining the growing warmth between it and the Congress-led Centre while avoiding a direct clash with the central unit led by Prakash Karat, who had spearheaded the withdrawal of Left support to the first UPA government. “The decision to accept the central proposal for army participation was taken at the state level,’’ he said.

Just as the Bengal CPM wanted to flaunt its growing bonhomie with the Centre, the Congress would have wanted to bypass the CPM central leadership and offer the honour to Basu to widen the already existing rift between the two units. Sonia’s reference to Basu as a “comrade” with “high values” is part of the same strategy, observers said.

It is not clear yet whether Sonia will join the Left Front’s condolence rally on the Maidan on Sunday.

Sonia, the BJP’s L.K. Advani and other eminent persons who had attended the patriarch’s last journey will be among the invitees.

Although Mamata Banerjee was conspicuous by her absence yesterday, she will also be invited.

The Trinamul Congress did not say whether Mamata would attend the programme but its leaders admitted in private that she was unlikely to.

Some CPM leaders believe Mamata’s absence from Basu’s last journey, after having spoken eloquently about his elder-statesman status, has exposed her “short-sighted and narrow politics”.