Veteran communist leader former central committee member and former state secretary of the Communist Party of India ( Marxist Leninist) Liberation passed away on 11th August 2026 at his residence in Jaipur. His cremation will take place at Jaipur on 12th August, state secretary of the party comrade Shankar Lal Chaudhary said. Comrade Mahendra Chaudhary suffered a brain stroke two years back and was undergoing treatment at Jaipur.

He was born in a small village Togdi Kalan in Jhunjhnu district of Rajasthan and received his early education there only. He was born in a small peasant family and understood the hardships of peasant life closely. While studying in college he got attracted towards the communist movement particularly the peasant uprising at Naxalbari in West Bengal. In 1970 he entered the left politics and decided to work for the rural peasantry in the state of Rajasthan. He chose southern Rajasthan for his work and spent his life time among the tribal people organizing them to fight against the exploitation by money lenders, feudal and state authorities.

 Mahendra Singh Choudhary met Srilata Swaminathan at a meeting in Delhi in 1973 and they got married in 1976 while in hiding. Srilatha Swaminathan had joined the CPI(ML)L in 1972. She organised the farmers and farm workers of Mehrauli and hotel workers in Delhi. During the Emergency of 1975, Swaminathan was arrested and imprisoned at Tihar jail for 10 months, after which she was moved to a jail in Chennai. While in Chennai, she organised the port workers into a union. She was briefly imprisoned with Maharani Gayatri Devi during the Emergency.

In 1977, Mahendra Chaudhary and Srilatha moved to Rajasthan. They then moved to Ghantali, a small village which was then in Banswara district. While there, they fought for the rights of tribals, particularly their forcible displacement due to the construction of the Mahi Bajaj Sagar Dam and the Sardar Sarovar Dam. They also organized bonded labour, slum dwellers and hotel workers. The duo also organized farmers under the Rajasthan Kisan Sanghathan and Srilatha Swaminathan became its president for a few years. Under her leadership, the peasants revolted in Hadmatiya. Till 1980 they worked as a team of UCCRI (ML) and later in 1989 after the successful intervention of the party in Loksabha elections and the massive rally at Delhi on 8th October in1990 they joined CPI (ML).

In the 1990, Srilatha Swaminathan was elected president of the AIPWA. In 1992, she was part of the protests against the gangrape of Bhanwari Devi. She helped in forming the People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) in Jaipur in 1996. Both Mahendra Chaudhary and Srilatha Swaminathan remained active members of CPI (ML) Liberation and were members of the central committee of the party. They lived in a small village Ghantali in Banswara district for many years. They organized Adivasis and made them free of traditional systems of  Hali and Sagdi.  They worked in Salumber, Pratapgarh, Dungarpur and Banswara region for decades. Srilatha Swaminathan suffered a brain stroke on January 28th 2017 and was hospitalized in Udaipur where she breathed her last on Feb 5th, 2017. Ironically comrade Mahendra Chaudhary suffered a brain stroke and passed away on August 11, 2026. The General Secretary of CPI (ML) Liberation comrade Dipankar Bhattacharya has mourned the death of comrade Mahendra Chaudhary.