COMRADE R Govindarajan, a senior leader of the All India Insurance Employees Association (AIIEA), and editorial board member of the “Marxist” (Tamil) monthly magazine of the Tamil Nadu state committee of the CPI(M),  breathed his last on February 18, 2017.Com R Govindarajan, fondly called RG by the insurance employees throughout the country, worked in various positions of AIIEA for more than 40 years.

EMINENT Scholar Prof. Javeed Alam who had been associated with the Communist Party of India (Marxist) from 1970 onwards, passed away in the early hours of December 5, 2016 after a brief illness. Born in 1943 in Hyderabad he came from a family which was deeply involved in the Telangana armed struggle led by the Communist Party against the feudal oppression of the Nizam and for land distribution to the peasantry.After studying in Osmania University he had come to Delhi in 1966 to pursue his PhD.

COMRADE Narayan Atmaram Sawant who expired on September 29 at village Nigude, Sawantwadi Taluka in Maharashtra was a veteran leader of news paper employees in Maharashtra. He was 82 and one of the leading functionaries in the founding of the CPI(M) and the CITU in Maharashtra. Though trade union field was his main activity, Sawant was equally active in the political front of the undivided CPI as well as of the AITUC. From late 50s to 1980s, he was residing at Prabhadevi in Mumbai and thereafter in Belapur near B T Ranadive Bhavan.

Comrade V V DakshinamoorthiCPI(M) Kerala state secretariat member and former chief editor of Deshabhimani, Comrade V V Dakshinamoorthi passed away on August 30. 82 year old Dakshinamoorthi was under treatment at Kozhikode District Co-operative Hospital in Calicut for lung cancer. Comrade Dakshinamoorthi, an eminent parliamentarian and an excellent orator has been in the forefront of teachers’ movement in its founding years.

THE secretariat of the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) expressed its profound grief at the passing away of Comrade Mohammed Nizamuddin, veteran trade union leader from West Bengal, general secretary of the All India Beedi Workers’ Federation and a member of the all India working committee of CITU. He passed away in Kolkata on June 21, 2016 at the age of 83.