CPM’s Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee Rejects Padma Bhushan

“I don’t know anything about a Padma Bhushan award. No one told me anything about it. If they have given me a Padma Bhushan award, I am rejecting it,” he said in a brief statement in Bengali posted on his party CPM’s Bengal social media pages.

According to the central government, the Union Home Secretary had spoken with Mr Bhattacharjee’s wife about the award this morning. She had accepted the award and said thanks, the Home Ministry said, explaining the flub.

A fierce critic of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, the 77-year-old has been suffering from age-related ailments along with heart and lung conditions for quite some time and has largely retracted himself from public appearances.

Rejection of the Padma Awards are extremely rare – recipients are required to confirm acceptance before the announcement.

Mr Bhattacharjee, a lifelong Marxist, was the second of two prominent opposition figures named for the Padma Awards this year. Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad, part of a dissident group in the party that has questioned its leadership, was the other.