CPI leader Bardhan's condition 'critical but stable'

The condition of veteran CPI leader AB Bardhan, who was admitted to a hospital in New Delhi on Monday after he suffered a paralytic stroke, is "critical but stable", CPI said on Friday.

"Senior CPI leader Bardhan, a veteran of Left movement who was admitted to GB Pant Hospital after he complained of breathlessness, continues to be critical but stable. He had brain haemorrhage," CPI said in a statement. Doctors attending to him are making "all-out" efforts to save Bardhan, who still is in ICU, the party added.

Ex-Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda, CPI state council secretaries of Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Karnataka were amongst those who called on the former general secretary of the Left outfit today. Ninety-two-year-old Ardhendu Bhushan Bardhan has been a leading figure of the trade union movement and Left politics in Maharashtra. He had won as an Independent candidate in the Maharashtra Assembly in 1957.

He later rose to become the General Secretary and then the President of the All India Trade Union Congress, the oldest trade union in India. Bardhan moved to Delhi politics in the 1990s and became the Deputy General Secretary of the CPI. He succeeded Indrajit Gupta as the general secretary of the party in 1996.