Veteran CPI leader A.B. Bardhan dead
02 January, New Delhi
Veteran Communist Party of India (CPI) leader A.B. Bardhan died at a hospital here on Saturday, a doctor said. He was 92.
“The CPI leader died at 8.20 p.m. Our team tried hard but could not save him. His condition was very critical,” said Dr. Vinod, who led the medical team at G.B. Pant Hospital here.
Bardhan had suffered a paralytic stroke on December 7, following which he was admitted to the hospital. He was on ventilation for the past two weeks and according to the doctors, his chances of survival were bleak.
The leader who lived in the CPI headquarters Ajoy Bhavan, was born on September 25, 1924 in present Bangladesh .
He was a former general secretary of the CPI, one of the oldest parties in India.
Left stalwart A B Bardhan would be remembered for his sustained struggled for labour rights and as a man, who never compromised.
Ardhendu Bhushan Bardhan lived a simple life with high thinking.Popularly called ‘comrade’ among party workers, he spearheaded numerous movements, including the historic spate of labour protests of 1970s.
A known face of Left politics in the country, Bardhan started his mainstream political career in 1957 after winning as an independent candidate in the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly.
Soon, he rose to become the General Secretary and then, the President of All India Trade Union Congress, the oldest Trade Union of the country.Bardhan moved to Delhi politics in the 1990s and became the Deputy General Secretary of CPI.
He succeeded Indrajit Gupta as the General Secretary of the party in 1996.Bardhan was born, when India was still under colonial rule.
He participated in the freedom struggle and had closely seen all Prime Ministers and political trends in Independent India.Of his 91 years, he spent four in jail, three of them in independent India.
For the past 30 years, he has been living in a single-room quarters of Ajoy Bhawan, CPI headquarters, and had never occupied the much-coveted Lutyens’ Delhi bungalow, though he had one allotted to him as General Secretary of the party.
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