Senior CPI-M trade union leader Shyamal Chakraborty dies of coronavirus in Kolkata

KOLKATA: Senior CPI(M) leader Shyamal Chakrabarty died on Thursday (August 6, 2020), days after he tested positive for coronavirus. The veteran CPI-M politician died in the afternoon at a hospital in Kolkata.

Shyamal Chakrabarty was a senior Trade Union leader in West Bengal.

A former state cabinet minister, Shyamal Chakraborty was admitted to a private nursing home on July 30 with severe breathing trouble and other old-age ailments causing concern among his family, party comrades and large followers about his health. 

According to his daughter Ushashi Chakraborty, the octogenarian CPI-M leader was suffering from breathing problems after developing some infection in his lungs.

He was then admitted to a nursing home near his North Kolkata residence.

A former transport minister in the cabinet of the then Chief Minister Jyoti Basu for several years during the 34 years Left Front rule in Bengal, Chakraborty was also a leading trade union figure and the state secretary of  CITU, the labour wing of the CPI-M for long. 

But because of his old age, he was not very active in the party affairs.