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Business News/ Politics / Policy/  Congress veteran Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi, who came to the fore with Indira Gandhi, dies
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Congress veteran Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi, who came to the fore with Indira Gandhi, dies

Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi, who was critically ill for the past one month, passed away on Monday at the age of 72 after a nine- year-long illness

A file photo of late Congress leader Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi. Photo: AFPPremium
A file photo of late Congress leader Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi. Photo: AFP

Kolkata: Politicians in India are typically valued only for incremental contributions to their parties and constituencies—they fade out of public memory when they choose to ride into the sunset. But not so former Congress leader and Union minister Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi, who died on Monday at the age of 72, after a nine- year-long illness.

Even in 2016, the Congress included Dasmunsi in its list of 90 campaigners for the assembly election in West Bengal, and explained it as a recognition of his enduring goodwill among supporters.

In October 2008, Dasmunsi was still a cabinet minister with dual charge of parliamentary affairs and information and broadcasting when he suffered a massive heart attack. Though he survived it, it led to a brain failure. In November 2009, he was taken to Germany and underwent stem cell therapy, without success.

He was “critically ill" for the past one month, Indraprastha Apollo Hospitals said, adding that his wife Deepa Dasmunsi, a Congress lawmaker, and their son were at his side when he breathed his last.

Dasmunsi came to the forefront of national politics back in 1971, when at the age of 26 he was elected to the Lok Sabha from a constituency in Kolkata. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was at that time battling a division within the Congress party, and Dasmunsi had by then emerged as one of the most prominent leaders in the brigade of Gandhi’s young supporters.

With time, Dasmunsi emerged as the face of the new order in the Congress which came to the fore with Gandhi. He nurtured future leaders in West Bengal, but later was on the brink of quitting the Congress to join the Trinamool Congress .

“It is like a death within my own extended family," said Subrata Mukherjee, once a close aide and a minister in West Bengal.

“I was only a boy when I had travelled into the interiors of South 24 Parganas district, far from Kolkata, only to hear him speak," said Firhad Hakim, another minister in West Bengal. “He was such an amazing orator."

Besides his oratorical skills, Dasmunsi was held in esteem for his political decorum and respect for offices in a parliamentary democracy.

In Left-ruled West Bengal, he was as much a street fighter as any other leader of his time, but he was still respected as much by the establishment as by the Congress, recalled another Trinamool Congress leader, who asked not to be named.

“Because we were both into students’ politics, I knew him personally," said Biman Bose, a veteran leader of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPM, and a Politburo member. “I am deeply saddened by his death."

“He played an important role in India’s parliamentary democracy," said Surjya Kanta Mishra, another CPM Politburo member.

Apart from politics, Dasmunsi was passionate about football and was president of the All India Football Federation for almost two decades. He is credited with launching the National Football League, which was renamed I-League in 2007 while he was still in office.

Despite his early promise as a politician, Dasmunsi was unable to hold the Congress together in West Bengal. After Mamata Banerjee rode out of it with a bunch of rebel leaders to launch the Trinamool Congress in January 1998, there was little he could do to nurse the Congress back to health in his home state.

By 2001, Banerjee had established herself as the only opposition leader who could take on the CPM and its allies in their bastion, while Dasmunsi turned his focus towards national politics.

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Published: 20 Nov 2017, 03:07 PM IST
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