onset; hartals, civil disobedience and demonstrations had soon become the order of the day in the face of a Congress government that was seen as unresponsive to the social and economic distress that was widespread in the state at the time. The new assembly therefore instituted the West Bengal Special Powers Act 1947 modelled on the Defence of India Act 1915; the act gave unchecked power to the bureaucracy and the police to suppress public agitations allowing law enforcement to detain individuals for up to 6 months without trial on reasonable grounds, which was justified on the grounds of maintaining the law and order situation. The bill was inordinately criticised and opposed by Basu who declared that "it seeks to perpetuate (the undemocratic rule)". In 1948, the government sought to extent the act through the West Bengal Security Ordinance which would remove the restriction of "reasonable grounds" for imprisonment. According to Basu, the new ordinance had made it clear that the Congress intended to establish a police state in West Bengal. By this time, the state of West Bengal had already been declared as a "problem province" by the Congress administration and Bidhan Chandra Roy replaced as the new chief minister. During the presentation of the ordinance as a bill in the assembly, Basu attempted to oppose it on a clause by clause basis but in vain due to the dominance of the Congress in the assembly, only the two communist legislators Ratanlal Brahmin and Basu along with independent members opposed the bill. Basu argued that while the Congress spoke of Kisan Raj (), it had made no progress in abolishing the Zamindari system and had instead developed vested interests with the Zamindars () themselves which resulted in the persistence of poor socioeconomic conditions and the employment of repressive tactics against agitations. In the following period the Communist Party was made illegal by the government on allegations of trying to incite on open rebellion and Basu repeatedly arrested as a result; on 24 March 1948, he was imprisoned for a period of three months and released on the orders of the Calcutta High Court. In December 1948, he married a second time, this time with Kamala Devi but soon went into hiding and kept changing residences due to an ongoing crackdown on communist leaders. For a period at the time, he had reportedly lived alongside Indrajit Gupta, who would later