Sitaram Yechury, lifetime’s CPI(M) leader passed away after prolonged illness. Since, August 19 he was admitted in AIIMS hospital in Delhi due to pneumonia – respiratory tract infection. A team of expert doctors shifted him to the ICU due to his deteriorating condition. During treatment at the AIIMS hospital, he breathed his last at the age of 72. With the death of Sitaram Yechury, an intellectual face of the Communist Party of India (M) has passed away.
Sitaram Yechury, was born on 12th August 1952, in a Telugu family in Madras. His father was an engineer in the Andhra Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation and mother was a government employee. Merely at the age of 17 years he put his foots on the soil to Delhi to participate in the Telangana agitation in 1969.
Sitaram Yechury, married to journalist Seema Chishti, editor of ‘The Wire’ and formerly the Delhi editor of ‘BBC-Hindi’. She was also the resident editor of the ‘Indian Express’. He has a daughter and son from his first wife Indrani Mazumdar. He lost his son aged 34 years; Ashish Yechury, who succumbed to coronavirus on 22nd April 2021.
Sitaram Yechury was one of the senior most leader of the leftist movement in Indian politics who spent his entire life staying loyal to one party and its ideology. His political career started 1974, when he joined the Students Federation of India (SFI). The very next year he joined the Communist Party. Since 1992, he was a member of the Politburo (highest body) of the Communist Party. He was a member of the Rajya Sabha from West Bengal for twelve years from 2005 to 2017. He was awarded as the ‘Best Parliamentarian – Rajya Sabha’ in 2017.
After Prakash Karat, Sitaram Yechury, who spent almost 50 years in Indian politics right from the day he joined SFI, was elected as General Secretary of the CPI (M) in the year 2015. For three times he was the chief of CPI(M). He was trained by late CPI-M leader Harkishan Singh Surjeet, who played an important role in the coalition-era government. For the first time during the tenure of Harkishan Singh Surjeet, CPI(M) externally supported the governments of V.P. Singh and later on the United Alliance government in 1996-97.
Sitaram Yechury had friends across the political spectrum. His political acumen and prowess came to the fore when the Left parties supported the first UPA government and maintained constant pressure on the Congress-led government on policy-making issues. He played an important role in the discussions with the government regarding the Indo-US nuclear deal.
Sitaram Yechury was a student of St Stephen’s College and Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in Delhi. He enrolled for Ph.D. in Economics but couldn’t complete as he got arrested during the emergency declared by the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1975. He was destined to play a more important role in national politics.
After his release from jail, Yechury was elected JNU Students’ Union President for three consecutive terms. Meanwhile, he met Prakash Karat. Later they both stayed with each other forever. Yechury was known to all as a learned and intellectual Marxist leader. Yechury remained one of the most vocal critics of the liberal economic policies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government.
His answer to a question ‘What one law would you change in India?’ was, “I would amend the fundamental rights in the Constitution to include the right to health, employment and realisable education”.
To another question, ‘What will you do when you retire?’ he replied, “I won’t”. His family donated his body to AIIMS for teaching and research purposes.
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