Agartala: Veteran CPI-M leader in Tripura and the party's central committee member Bijan Dhar, aged 70,  died at a Kolkata hospital on Monday following post-Covid-19 complications, doctors and party sources said. Dhar, who was the Convener of the Left Front Committee in Tripura, is survived by daughter Gopa Dhar and wife Ila Dasgupta. According to reports, his body will be brought back to Agartala on Monday and likely to be handed over to the Agartala government medical college and hospital on Tuesday as per the wish of the Left leader.

He was tested positive for Covid-19 on September 13 and after a brief treatment in Agartala he was shifted to a private hospital in Kolkata where he breathed his last early on Monday morning. A central committee member of the Communist Party of India-Marxist, Dhar was elected as the Secretary of the Tripura state committee of the CPI-M in 2008 and continued on that post till 2018. He was elected to the Central Committee of the party at its 17th Congress in 2002.

Condoling the death, CPI-M politburo in a statement said that Dhar was actively involved in the student movement in the 1970s and he was elected to the Tripura state committee of the party in 1978.  During the Emergency in 1975-77, he had remained underground for more than a year before he was subsequently arrested and jailed for five months, the statement said.

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