Nirupam Sen (politician)


Nirupam Sen was a Bengali Marxist political leader and former Commerce and Industries minister of the Government of West Bengal.

Political career

Sen was born in 1946 in Bardhaman, State of West Bengal. He became a member of the Communist Party of India during his student years. In 1966, Sen was appointed as the district secretary of the Students Federation of India, students wing of the party. Although he started his career as a teacher, he became whole timer of the party in 1968. Since 1989 to 1995 Sen was District secretary of Bardhaman district Committee. In 1987 West Bengal Legislative Assembly election, he was first elected as MLA from Bardhaman town assembly constituency. Thereafter he became the member of the Central Committee in 1998 and Polit Bureau of the party in 2008. Sen was re elected to the West Bengal State Assembly in 2001 and 2006 from the Bardhaman Dakshin. After the Left Front was voted to power in 2001, Sen was handed the charge of Commerce and Industries and continued till 2011. He lost to the Trinamool Congress candidate Rabiranjan Chattopadhyay in 2011 from the same Vidhan Sabha. He was considered to be the prime mover of the industrial drives in West Bengal. Under the leadership of him and then Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, Left Front Government led new industrialisation policy in Singur and Nandigram.

Controversy

By the end of 2006, the land acquisition movement at Hooghly over the Singur Tata Nano controversy had started taking a toll on the regime. The protest against the forcible land acquisition ultimately caused serious affects to the Government. Sen faced with intense criticism both within and outside the party. Apart from land acquisition issues, Sen’s name also cropped up in the Sainbari incident in March 1970 after the fall of United Front government in West Bengal. He along with Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee quit the Politburo during the party’s Vishakapatanam Congress in 2015 due to ill health.

Death

Since 2013, Sen was suffering from various health issues like neurological and kidney related ailments. He died on 24 December 2018 at 72 following a cardiac arrest in Bidhannagar.