Thin crowd at event to mark Dang’s birth anniv

Reflecting declining support for communists in Punjab, just a little over 100 sympathisers attended an event organised by the CPI to mark the birth anniversary of leftist leader Satya Pal Dang here today.

The towering figure in the state politics, Dang had defeated former Chief Minister Giani Gurmukh Singh Musafir of the Congress by a margin of nearly 10,000 votes from the Amritsar West constituency in his first Assembly poll battle in 1967.

Dang was elected four times to the state Assembly. His wife Vimla Dang was elected to the House in 1992. However, no communist group has won any election in Punjab since 1999.

While around 10 communist groups/parties are active in the state, they were not able to contest all 13 parliamentary seats in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

In the four parliamentary seats, which the CPI and CPM contested, they could manage less than 0.5 per cent of the votes.

Amarjit Singh Asal, member, CPI national council, said, “Communist parties aim to help workers. When there are no mills, there are no workers and hence no support for the ideology.”

He said in 1960s and 70s, Amritsar had several mills, which employed more than 5,000 workers.

Another important reason for erosion of their support base in rural areas is that communist leaders opposed the militant movement in the 1980s. “We opposed killings of innocents by terrorists but deliberate attempts were made to portray the communists as supporters of the police and anti-Sikh,” added Asal.

A veteran communist leader said, “When wards of our senior leaders went abroad for studying, our common workers felt cheated. Our downfall began.”