This is the front page of The Indian Express published on March 3, 1980, Forty Years Ago.

The stage has been set in Peking for Senior Vice-Premier Deng Xiaoping to assume complete control over China, possibly even assuming the presidency of the People’s Republic. Observers studying the events of the recent dramatic central committee meeting said the shifts within the Communist Party politburo clearly put Deng, 75, in unquestioned authority. Among the key moves approved during the four-day meeting were: Purging four politburo members suspected of being collaborators of the “gang of four” ; naming two Deng proteges including Zhao Ziyang to the politburo standing committee, the party organisation that rules China day-to-day; recruiting a strong central secretariat to work under Hu Yaobang to control the 37-million member party organisation; posthumous clearance of the former president Liu Shaoqi, who was the chief victim of the Cultural Revolution during the 1960s; and preparations for calling a full party congress — only the 12th since the Communist Party was founded in 1921. With the resurrection of Liu Shaoqi, his position as president of PRC will be restored, which was abolished by Mao Zedong during the Cultural revolution.

AIADMK violence

More than 400 persons were injured when police resorted to lathi charge and burst tear gas shells at several places on the Anna Salai after a march by the workers of the AIADMK turned violent. Eighty six police personnel were among the injured. A sentry at the Anna Salai polic station fired five rounds in the air to scare away a mob that threatened to snatch his rifle. Some of them entered the police station and damaged station property.

Tito Serious

President Josep Britz Tito’s doctors reported a deteriorisation in the fuctioning of his heart. The 87-year-old Yugoslave leader’s medical panel said the decline involved the deterioration of Tito’s heart as well.