Veteran CPI leader Satypal Dang passes away

Amritsar (PTI): Veteran communist leader Satypal Dang, who was in the forefront of the battle against terrorism and secessionism in Punjab, died here today after prolonged illness. He was 93. His wife Vimla Dang, also a CPI leader, died in May 2009. The couple, who had waged a relentless fight for the downtrodden, opted not to have any child as "they did not want to divert their attention from the people's stuggles". Dang would be cremated on Sunday afternoon. He was born in 1920 in Shekupra district of Lahore. He married Vimla, a Kashmiri Pandit who graudated from Kinnard College for Women in Lahore, in 1952 in Mumbai after she returned from Prague where she represented India in the International Union of Students. After marriage, the couple shifted to Chheharta here. The Communist couple had gone underground during the British rule. Dang attracted national attention when he defeated Gurmukh Singh Musafir, Congress Chief Minister of the state, and won the assembly election with a convincing margin in 1967. He retained the Amritsar West seat till 1980 and served as a minister in a non-Congress government. Though he had lost the assembly seat to Sewa Ram Arora of Congress in 1980, Vimla Dang won back the seat for CPI in the 1992 elections. The couple retired from the National Council of CPI and decided not to contest the assembly elections on the ground that there must be an age limit for holding political office.