Comrade Parmeshwar Singh

COMRADE Parmeshwar Singh, the veteran trade union leader and  working committee member of CITU died on  March 2, 2004, at All India Institute of Medical Science, New Delhi, after prolonged illness. He was 88.

Comrade Parameshwar Singh is one of those who played a crucial role in establishing and developing the CITU central office as the important centre of the trade union movement in the country since its inception. He had been in the trade union movement for over five decades. He was born in Sherghati in Gaya district of Bihar and started his working life as a worker of the then foreign-owned Petroleum company, Caltex at Calcutta in the late thirties and subsequently became an activist of the Petroleum Workers Union. In that process he got actively associated with the work of Bengal Provincial Trade Union Congress (BPTUC). He took early retirement from service in 1969. After formation of CITU in 1970, he joined the CITU centre as a wholetimer and shouldered tremendous responsibility in organising the central office at its formative stage. He was subsequently elected in the all India working committee of the CITU and remained in that position till death. He had also been a member of Communist Party of India (Marxist) since last more than thirty years. Despite falling health, he remained actively associated with the work of CITU centre till the last days of his life. 

The CITU secretariat while expressing grave shock over the demise of Comrade Parmeshwar Singh, conveyed its heartfelt condolences to his bereaved family members. M K Pandhe and Chittabrata Majumdar, president and general secretary of the CITU, both of whom were out of Delhi at the time of Comrade Singh’s death, have conveyed their heartfelt condolences. Prakash Karat, Polit Bureau member of CPI(M), E Balanandan, vice president of CITU, Kanai Banerjee, K Hemalata, Tapan Sen, secretaries of CITU, Ranjit Basu, treasurer of CITU,  Sunit Chopra, secretary, All India Agricultural Workers Union, Pramila Pandhe, vice president of All India Democratic Womens’ Association, P M S Grewal, Delhi state secretary of CPI(M), and many others paid their homage to the departed leader before his last journey.