Citing ill-health, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) patriarch Jyoti Basu once again offered on Monday to step down from the Politburo. He said he would raise the matter at a meeting of the party's top policy-making body beginning in Kolkata on Tuesday.
"Yes, I have been telling them (the party top brass) that I do not wish to continue in the Politburo due to age and ill-health and want to resign. I can't go outside Kolkata to attend party meetings and there is no use of my continuing," he told PTI.
He said, "Though the issue has not been kept on the party agenda, I will raise it at Tuesday's meeting of the Politburo," Basu said.
The 93-year-old former West Bengal chief minister felt that the CPI(M) leadership was not inclined to accept his request.
"I made the request to this effect to party general secretary Prakash Karat when he last came to see me in Kolkata recently," Basu, who has not been keeping well for quite some time, said.
The veteran Marxist has almost seven decades of politics behind him. After being elected West Bengal chief minister for the sixth consecutive term he had stepped down in late 2000 when Buddhadeb Bhattacherjee took over.
The top brass of CPI(M), which is providing crucial outside support to the ruling alliance at the Centre, will discuss the strategy to be adopted on a host of issues, including United Progressive Alliance government's economic and foreign policies at the two-day meeting.