Mumbai:
Describing veteran Communist leader Jyoti Basu as a stalwart, senior BJP leader L K Advani said on Sunday that the late Marxist was among the greats.
"He was a stalwart... a great leader. He held the CPM fort in West Bengal for a long time," Advani told reporters in Mumbai.
"The Communist movement has been affected. Basu was in the line of great leaders like E M S Namboodiripad, Bhupesh Gupta and Indrajit Gupta," he said.
"Our ideologies were different. Still, going by his greatness, I respect him and pay my tributes," Advani added.
The 95-year-old leader died today at Kolkata's AMRI Hospital where he was admitted with pneumonia on January one.