State CPI(M) leaders are not keen on seeing Basu bow out was evident at the just-concluded state committee meeting. The issue was not raised at the two-day meeting, which assessed the party's -- and the Left Front's -- performance in the recent Lok Sabha elections. ``It's not an issue for the state committee to discuss,'' Biman Bose said.

Party general secretary Harkishen Singh Surjeet too kept the issue open as he ducked questions on Basu's retirement. He only said that thepolitburo meeting would discuss the question of reducing Basu's responsibilities as Chief Minister. Basu himself has dismissed subsequent newspaper reports which said that Information and Home Minister Buddhadev Bhattacharyya might be made Deputy Chief Minister to take over most of Basu's responsibilities. ``It's all pure kite-flying,'' quipped senior party leader Nirupam Sen.

While Bhattacharyya has been groomed for some years to take on Basu's mantle, the party has its reasons for keeping Basu at the helm for as long as he can.

Firstly, Bhattacharyya not only lacks stature, but has only grudging acceptance among the CPI)M)'s partners in the Left Front. His handling of some critical situations has also left party leaders wondering if he is really up to the job of Chief Minister. The party also has only a few leaders to choose from. There is Lok Sabha veteran Somnath Chatterjee, Finance Minister Asim Dasgupta and Assembly Speaker Hasim Abdul Halim. But Bhattacharyya has long beaten others in therace.

Secondly, the question of Basu's retirement has come at a crucial time for the party and its government. The party's performance in the Lok Sabha elections showed it was losing ground to the new political force comprising BJP and Trinamool Congress.

While Basu is unlikely to campaign for the party in the next Assembly elections due in June, 2001, a curtain raiser to that will come in less than six months when the Calcutta municipal corporation and 81 municipalities across the state go to the polls next May. In choosing Bhattacharyya, the party may have settled the question of after Basu, who. But it seems more concerned with the more important question of after Basu, what. Hence, the collective reluctance to let the patriarch call it a day.