Prateek Tanmay
3 min readMumbaiJul 18, 2026 10:16 PM IST
Senior socialist leader, former MLA and founder-president of Yuvak Kranti Dal — better known as Yukrand — Dr Kumar Saptashri passed away on Saturday in Pune. He was 84.
Born on August 21, 1941, Saptarshi began his social life under the leadership of Jayprakash Narayan in Bihar’s Gaya where he ran a help centre for people affected by drought. He formed Yukrand in November 1967. The Yukrand years hold an important position in the history of Maharashtra as it was a group of socialist leaders who aggressively took up the issue of social justice. The organisation was so active on the issue of caste discrimination that it led joint agitations with Dalit Panther in later years.
An MBBS doctor, Saptarshi was in the forefront of a number of agitations of medical students across the state against the fee hike and led them successfully. He was a practicing doctor in Pune from 1969 which he continued till 1974 when he moved to ‘Rashin Commune,’ in erstwhile Ahmadnagar district which was the centre of activities carried out by Saptarshi.
Saptarshi was active in the name change movement of Marathwada University to Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar University. Yukrand gave platform to numerous young leaders who later went on to become political leaders, journalists, authors and were part of the social churn of Maharashtra.
After working underground for the first three months, he was jailed during the emergency from October 1975 to January 1977. After his release, Saptarshi joined the Janata Party in 1977 and contested the Maharashtra assembly polls from Ahmadnagar seat, successfully. Throughout his career, Saptarshi was arrested 35 times due to a number of agitations, including one of the first uses of MISA against him in 1972 over the medical student agitation against fee hike.
“We have lost the selfless leadership of the social change movement in Maharashtra,” said Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis while paying tribute to Saptarshi.
In his condolence message, the CM stated that Saptarshi was a thinker who provided direction to society, a Gandhian activist, and a source of inspiration for the progressive movement. “The passing of Dr Kumar Saptarshi is a great loss to the movements of rural development, education, social justice, and social transformation. The intellectual legacy he built and the path of struggle he forged will continue to inspire many generations to come,” he said.
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“The passing of Dr Kumar Saptarshi is a major loss to Maharashtra’s social, intellectual, and progressive movements. With his demise, a true follower of Gandhian thought, who raised his voice for democratic values and the rights of Dalits, the backward classes, and the marginalized, has passed away,” said Maharashtra Congress president Harshavardhan Sapkal.
