Tripura CPI(M) secretary Goutam Das passed away Thursday at a private hospital in Kolkata while undergoing treatment for Covid-19.
He tested positive for the virus in the end of August this year and later, was admitted to a private hospital here. After his condition deteriorated, he was shifted to a hospital in Kolkata on September 6, where he passed away this morning around 7:20 am.
A statement issued by the CPI(M) politburo said this afternoon, “The politburo of the CPI(M) expresses its deep shock and grief at the sudden death of Gautam Das, member of its Central Committee and Secretary of the Tripura State Committee of the Party. He died this morning at a Kolkata hospital where he was undergoing treatment for Covid.”
Das, 70, is survived by Tapati Sen, his wife, his daughter Swagata Das and other family members.
Gautam Das joined politics as part of the students’ movement in Tripura. He joined the party’s weekly mouthpiece Deshar Katha during his college days.
After the newspaper became a daily in 1979, he became its founding editor, and was in the post until 2015.
Das was one of the founding members of the Agartala Press Club. He was also very active in the cultural movement and was the founder secretary of the Tripura Sanskriti Samanway Kendra.
Condoling his death, Agartala Press Club secretary Pranab Sarkar said, “The Agartala Press Club is shocked at the death of its founding member Goutam Das.”
Das joined CPI(M) in 1968. He was elected to the party’s Tripura state committee in 1986 and became the party’s state secretary in 2018.
He was elected to the CPI(M) central committee at the 21st Congress of the party in 2015. With ancestral family roots in Chittagong of Bangladesh, Das had attachment to the neighbouring country.
Taking to Twitter, Tripura Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb condoled his death and wrote, “I am deeply mourned at demise of CPM state secretary Goutam Das. I pray for the departed soul to rest in peace. I pray to God to give strength to the bereaved family to endure the pain.”
As per the latest reports from the state Covid control room, 83,715 people have been affected by the pandemic so far, with a 4.56 per cent positivity rate. Among them, 803 people have died and 82,434 have recovered.
