A file picture of Guha days before his death

Cooch Behar, Aug. 6: Former agriculture minister and chairman of the Forward Bloc’s state committee Kamal Guha passed away at a nursing home here this afternoon.

The 80-year-old leader had been admitted here with acute breathing trouble on July 24. Prior to that, Guha was treated for a week at a nursing home in Dinhata, his hometown, around 20km from here.

Hundreds gathered at the nursing home this morning after rumours spread that he had expired. Leaders across the political divide also made a beeline to pay homage.

The Bloc leader who lost his wife three years back breathed his last at 5.20 pm. His son, Udayan, a member of the party’s state committee, was by his bedside when he died.

According to the younger Guha, Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee had sent a medical team from Calcutta for his father who had been suffering from chronic breathing trouble for the past 10 years.

“But his condition deteriorating fast since last night and soon he was not responding to treatment,” Udayan said.

Born in Dinhata in 1928, Guha had his early education at Dinhata High School.

While doing his graduation from Krishnanagar College, he had been to jail four times for leading movements against the British Raj. He continued his firebrand strain of politics through his youth and won from the Dinhata Assembly constituency for the first time in 1962.

Guha was also the state agriculture minister for 14 years at a stretch from 1977.

In the early nineties he supported the movement for the exchange of enclaves between India and Bangladesh, popularly known as Tin Bigha movement. He went against the state government’s stand on the issue and was suspended from his party. He was reinstated in 2000.

Guha’s body will be taken to his ancestral house at Dinhata tomorrow. It will then be taken to the party office before being cremated. All institutions and establishments in the Dinhata subdivision are expected to remain closed tomorrow.

While Bhattacharjee has expressed shock, Bloc general secretary Ashok Ghosh described him as a great leader.