CPM celebrates 109th birth anniversary of former Bengal chief minister Jyoti Basu

Left front chairman Biman Bose, former legislator Sujan Chakraborty, state CPM secretary Md Salim were present at the event

The CPM on Friday celebrated the 109th birth anniversary of former Bengal chief minister Jyoti Basu.

Left front chairman Biman Bose, former legislator Sujan Chakraborty, state CPM secretary Md Salim were present at an event at New Town to lay the foundation stone (in picture) for Jyoti Basu Centre for Social Studies and Research.

The leaders also distributed saplings among local residents as a part of a reach-out programme.

Later in the evening, CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechuri delivered the Jyoti Basu Memorial lecture on 75 years of India’s Independence at Pramode Dasgupta Bhavan in Calcutta. Yechuri argued for strengthening Left unity while bringing together social and political forces to ensure broadest mobilisation of a secular coalition to combat communal forces.

He said secular and democratic forces of the country needed to identify a common minimum denominator that would form the basis of the platform to take on the communal regime at the Centre. He said the choice of Opposition candidate for the presidential poll was based on this broad understanding of coming together of secular forces against the communal BJP.

3 more die of Covid

Bengal on Friday reported 2,950 Covid-19 infections, 637 recoveries and three deaths, with the case positivity rate standing at 16.92 per cent.

The state has currently 18,856 active patients — 18,320 in home isolation and 536 at hospitals. According to a state government bulletin, the recovery rate was 98.04 per cent and mortality rate 1.04 per cent on Friday. A total of 17,430 samples were tested.

Bengal has so far recorded 20,45,781 Covid patients, of whom 20,05,689 have recovered. The number of total deaths was 21,236.