Even as the question hangs thick among observers, including those close to the Left Front rule, a raging debate begins as regards the reasons for the octogenarian Marxist's decision to say quits from the top job after twenty-three years of uninterrupted rule.

Was the Trinamool Congress chief and railway minister Mamata Banerjee spreading her tentacles too fast and too wide in the state to give headache to Mr Basu in the forthcoming Assembly elections early next year? Or was Mr Basu disillusioned with his own party for letting him down on the issue of joining the government at the Centre during 1996, which he himself described as a historical blunder? Were people getting disenchanted with the Left Front rule in the state? Worse still, did he fear the fall of the Left Front rule in the near future?

Indeed, a combination of factors seem to have resulted in the Marxist leader's decision to say goodbye to the chief ministerial chair on the eve of the Assembly elections. Ms Banerjee's rise in the state politics was in direct proportion to the fall of Left Front bastions in several pockets in the recent months.

The local body elections held just a few months ago showed that the communist influence was waning in substantial part of West Bengal. Not just that, even the BJP, a party anathema to the people of the state until recently, was rearing its head.

These developments apparently showed that the CPI(M) was no longer in a position to claim supremacy even in rural Bengal, thus far known to be the hardcore bastion of the party. Some of the recent brutal killings in 24-Parganas and other far-flung areas of the state went to prove that political opponents of the Marxists were raising their head in no small measure and that they ran the risk of losing elections in many places in the forthcoming assembly poll.

Not to talk of the Opposition, some diehard Marxist leaders had also begun to question the leadership about its policies, programmes and their efficacy in the present scenario.

The rebellion of the youthful Marxist leader, Saifuddin Choudhury and his followers could be seen in that background. Mr Choudhury was forced to resign from the party and is now all set to float his own outfit. There is little doubt that the new party, whenever it takes shape, would inflict injury to the CPI(M) in particular and the left front in general.

Bengal under Mr Basu had come to a standstill for the past 10 years or so insofar as its development is concerned. Agrarian reforms which the party undertook two decades ago bore fruits for some time and, indeed, gave a push to the state's economy. It, however, petered out during the past decade.

Urban growth, on the other hand, was missing anyway. Urban voters or the `bhadralok' never got drawn to the party. The Left Front rule survived all these years because of the committed cadres who saw everything through the prism of the communist philosophy.

Apparently aware of all this, Mr Basu gave the hint of change when he visited the developed west in quest of the much-needed capital to catapult the state from its present morass. He sent abroad his blue-eyed party colleague and veteran parliamentarian Somnath Chatterjee as well to dispel the impression that the Left Front was against all that stood for `capitalism'. It did not seem to work, though, judging by the physical results. West Bengal is still to pick up in terms of industrial growth with few corporate houses willing to burn their fingers again.

Mr Basu will be, nonetheless, remembered as the longest serving chief minister of the state with a charisma unmatched in any democracy in modern times.

His more than two decade of uninterrupted rule is a legion.