Veteran communist leader Satypal Dang, who was at the forefront of the battle against terrorism and secessionism in Punjab, passed away on Saturday after a prolonged illness. He was 93.
His wife Vimla Dang, also a CPI leader, died in May 2009.
The couple, who had waged a relentless fight for the downtrodden, opted not to have any children as "they did not want to divert their attention from the people's struggles".
Dang would be cremated on Sunday afternoon.
Born in 1920 in Shekupra district of Lahore, Satypal Dang married Vimla, a Kashmiri Pandit who graduated from Kinnard College for Women in Lahore, in 1952 in Mumbai after she returned from Prague where she represented India in the International Union of Students.
After marriage, the couple shifted to Chheharta in Amritsar.
The communist couple had gone underground during the British rule.
Satypal Dang attracted national attention when he defeated Congress Chief Minister Gurmukh Singh Musafirand and won the assembly election with a convincing margin in 1967.
He retained the Amritsar West seat till 1980 and served as a minister in a non-Congress government.
Though he lost the assembly seat to Sewa Ram Arora of Congress in 1980, Vimla Dang won back the seat for CPI in the 1992 elections.
The couple retired from the National Council of CPI and decided not to contest the assembly elections on the ground that there must be an age limit for holding political office.
