Veteran Left leader and CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury died this afternoon. He was 72 and was undergoing treatment for respiratory ailments at Delhi’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS).
The CPM leader was admitted to the emergency ward of AIIMS on August 19 and later shifted to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). He was suffering from a pneumonia-like infection, but doctors had not disclosed the exact nature of the ailment. Mr Yechury recently underwent cataract surgery.
A member of the Politburo, CPM’s top decision-making body, for over three decades, Mr Yechury was a member of Rajya Sabha from 2005 to 2017.
An alumnus of Delhi’s St Stephen’s College and Jawaharlal Nehru University, Mr Yechury started his political career with the Students’ Federation of India and joined the CPIM in 1975. He was pursuing his doctorate in Economics from JNU when the Indira Gandhi government imposed the Emergency in 1975 and he was arrested along with many other leaders who would later play a key role in national politics. His PhD remained incomplete.
Mr Yechury was elected the president of JNU Student’s Union thrice in a year after he was out of jail. It was during this time that he also met Prakash Karat, who would remain a lifelong comrade.
In 1992, he was elected as a Politburo member. Four years later, he was among the leaders who played a key role in drafting the Common Minimum Programme for the United Front government. Mr Yechury also played a significant role in the forging the ruling coalition for the UPA government in 2004.
