Veteran CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury passes away at the age of 72 on Thursday

NEW DELHI: Veteran CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury died at the age of 72 today after a prolonged illness, his party and hospital sources said on Thursday.

Earlier on Tuesday, the CPI(M) veteran was being treated for acute respiratory tract infection at the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) in AIIMS.

Sitaram Yechury is credited with strengthening the left movement in India and re-establishing the CPM as a strong political force. Sitaram Yechury was a student of Delhi-based Jawaharlal University and worked closely with former CPM General Secretary Harkishan Singh Surjeet. It is believed that when the United Front government was formed in 1996, he had prepared the government's common minimum program with Congress leader P Chidambaram.

Apart from this, Sitaram Yechury also played an important role in the formation of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) during the 2004 Lok Sabha elections. Sitaram also worked very seriously in bringing the opposition parties on one platform in the India Bloc before the 2024 Lok Sabha elections this year.

Yechury was a bitter critic of the ideology of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the BJP and its communal politics. He had strongly opposed the Waqf Bill recently brought by the Modi government and also sharply criticized the lateral entry into the government bureaucracy.

Sitaram Yechury was born in 1952. He entered student politics in 1974 with the Students Federation of India (SFI). A year later he joined the CPM. Yechury was a member of the Politburo, the highest decision-making committee of the CPM, since 1992 and was also a member of the Rajya Sabha twice from 2005 to 2017. But the party did not send him to Rajya Sabha for the third time because according to the party policy, no member is sent to Parliament more than twice. After this, Yechury worked to strengthen the party organization.

He took over as the CPM General Secretary in 2015. Before him, Prakash Karat was the party General Secretary. Sitaram, popularly known as SRY in the party, proved to be the most dynamic General Secretary after the former General Secretary of the party Harkishan Singh Surjeet. He had expertise in making inroads among the people and establishing political relations outside the party as well.

Sitaram Yechury was a wonderful speaker and was liked in the party as a very soft-spoken leader because his temperament was to deepen mutual relations and he spoke in a humorous manner. Whenever any political differences arose, Sitaram Yechury was put forward as a troubleshooter.

Sitaram Yechury was brought up in Hyderabad where he studied till tenth standard till 1969. After this, he came to Delhi in 1970 and took admission in President's Estate School there. He had secured All India Rank in Higher Secondary Examination. After school, Yechury studied Economics from St. Stephen's College, Delhi and then obtained a Master's degree from JNU. Sitaram Yechury was the President of JNU Students Union for three consecutive times.

In 2021, Sitaram Yechury's elder son Ashish Yechury died of Covid at the age of just 35. Yechury's family now consists of wife Seema Chishti and two children.

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