By IANS
Cooch Behar (West Bengal) : All India Forward Bloc (AIFB) leader and former West Bengal agricultural minister Kamal Guha passed away Monday in this north Bengal town. He was 82.
Guha, a strong critic of some of his Left Front colleagues, was suffering from kidney-related diseases besides breathing troubles. He was admitted to a private nursing home in Cooch Behar, about 750 km from Kolkata, on July 24.
Several Left Front leaders visited the nursing home for paying their last respects to the octogenarian leader.
“I knew him personally for a long time and was his colleague in the cabinet also. He was a great mass leader and a political pillar of the Left Front in north Bengal. With the death of Kamal Guha the Left Front has lost a great political figure in the state,” West Bengal Fire Brigade Minister Pratim Chattopadhyay said.
Guha had served as the state agriculture minister for several terms. He used to represent the Dinhata assembly constituency in Cooch Behar.
Guha, who had made it a habit of defying the party line, was once expelled from Bloc in 1992. He then floated his own outfit – the Forward Bloc (Socialist) – but returned to the original party later.
His son is also a Forward Bloc member.