Veteran Congress leader and former information and broadcasting minister Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi breathed his last at Apollo Hospital in New Delhi at around 12.10 pm on Monday.
He was in coma for the past nine years after suffering a massive heart attack leading to paralysis on October 12, 2008. Dasmunshi was aged 72.
Beginning his career as Youth Congress state president in 1970, Dasmunshi went on to win Lok Sabha elections from Kolkata South constituency the next year in 1971 and won the Howrah Lok Sabha constituency in 1984 which he held on till 1991 and won the same constituency again in 1996.
He won from Raiganj Lok Sabha constituency in North Bengal in 1999 which he held on to till 2008.
He was responsible for strengthening the party’s organisational strength throughout West Bengal.
He was known as an ardent critique of communists. Besides, he was the president of All India Football Federation for almost 20 years.
Though all his basic body systems were functional, he was not conscious and was breathing through a tracheostomy tube in his neck.