THE state secretary of the Goa state organizing committee of the CPI(M), Comrade Thalmann Pradeep Pereira passed away at a hospital  on August 6, after a five day battle with a severe lung infection and multiple organ failure. He was 54 years old. Com Thalmann Pereira was born and brought up in the communist movement of Goa. His father Comrade Gerard Pereira, a prominent freedom fighter, was the founder of the Left trade union and communist movement in Goa. His mother Comrade Dr Luisa Pereira was an important leader of the dock workers and other trade unions.

SOUTH African liberation movement paid tribute to veteran leader Ahmed Kathrada who died on March 28, aged 87 after a long illness. Kathrada was one of the 11 original defendants at the 1963-64 Rivonia trial alongside ANC president Nelson Mandela and general secretary Walter Sisulu. He was imprisoned for 26 years on the notorious Robben Island prison off Cape Town alongside scores of ANC leaders. He later dedicated himself to the cause of Palestinian freedom and Palestinian prisoners detained in Israeli prisons.

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.

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.

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.