Senior leader of Communist Party of India (CPI) Gurudas Dasgupta passed away on Thursday morning. He was 83. The politician breathed his last in Kolkata, news agency ANI reported. He was suffering from heart and kidney related ailments. Dasgupta is survived by his wife and daughter.

“He (Dasgupta) passed away at his home in Kolkata at 6 am. He was suffering from lung cancer for quite some time. Due to his poor health, he had relinquished party posts, though he continued to be a member of the national executive council of the CPI,” West Bengal CPI secretary Swapan Banerjee said.

A fiery orator who never shied away from raising issues concerning the masses and the working class both inside and outside Parliament, Dasgupta was baptized into politics as a student leader during the tumultuous 50s and 60s.

After the CPI split in 1964, which led to the formation of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), Dasgupta decided to stay with the parent party. Later, he was shifted to the labour wing of the party in the early ’70s to work among the labour force employed in the organised and unorganised sectors.

Dasgupta worked as a parliamentarian for 25 years – first as a Rajya Sabha member for three terms in 1985, 1988 and 1994. In the 2004 Lok Sabha elections, he won from Panskura seat in West Bengal. In 2009, he was elected to the 15th Lok Sabha from Ghatal in West Bengal.

In 2001, he was elected as the general secretary of the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) in 2001. Besides, he was a member of the joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) on Harshad Mehta related Securities Scam and in the 2G spectrum scam.

In 2009, he was elected leader of the CPI party in Lok Sabha. He didn’t contest the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi condoled the demise of CPI veteran, saying he was a strong voice in Parliament. “Gurudas Dasgupta Ji was one of the most committed and articulate proponents of his ideology. He was a strong voice in Parliament, whose interventions were keenly heard across the political spectrum,” he tweeted.