CPM General Secretary Sitaram Yechury passes away at 72

New Delhi: Communist Party of India (Marxist) General Secretary Sitaram Yechury passed away on Thursday. He was 72. He was admitted to All India Institute Of Medical Sciences, Delhi, on August 19. He was treated for an acute respiratory tract infection at the intensive care unit. He was on respiratory support. According to sources, the veteran leader died at 3.05 pm.

A prominent figure in Indian politics, Yechury was a member of the CPM politburo for 32 years and became the party’s general secretary in 2015. From 2005 to 2017, he represented West Bengal in the Rajya Sabha.

Born on August 12, 1952, in Chennai, Yechury was originally named Yechury Sitarama Rao, the son of Sarveshwara Somayajalu Yechury and Kalpakam, a Vaidehi Brahmin couple.

He chose to drop the caste-based surname, becoming Sitaram Yechury, inspired by P Sundarayya, the first CPM general secretary, who had similarly changed his name from Sundara Rama Reddy. Yechury followed in Sundarayya's footsteps, becoming the second leader from Andhra Pradesh to hold the position of CPM general secretary.

Yechury’s paternal grandfather, Yechury Sitarama Rao, was a tehsildar in East Godavari, Andhra Pradesh. His maternal grandfather, Kandha Bhima Shankararam, was an advocate at the Madras High Court before becoming a judge at the Andhra Pradesh High Court.

With the Andhra Pradesh High Court's relocation from Guntur to Hyderabad, Yechury spent much of his early education in Hyderabad.

Due to his father’s job as an engineer with the Andhra Road Transport Corporation, Yechury frequently changed schools, attending the Railway School in Vijayawada and, later, All Saints School in Hyderabad.

While Yechury was studying his pre-university course (PUC) at Nizam College, Hyderabad, the Telangana agitation reached its height in 1967–68. The political unrest disrupted his studies for an entire year.

Soon after, his family relocated to Delhi, where he completed a one-year higher secondary course in science and mathematics at the President’s Estate School.

Yechury’s academic journey led him to St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, where he graduated with a first-class BA in Economics. He pursued his MA in Economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), where his leadership skills came to the fore, as he was elected president of the JNU Students' Union three times.

During the turbulent years of the Emergency, JNU became a centre of student activism. Yechury, along with many others, was arrested for protesting against Menaka Anand (later Menaka Gandhi) entering the School of Languages at JNU.

In 1984, Yechury was elected National President of the Students' Federation of India (SFI), and that same year, along with Prakash Karat, he became a permanent invitee to the CPM Central Committee.

By the following year, Yechury, Karat, and S Ramachandran Pillai were inducted as full members of the party’s Central Committee, with all three reaching the Politburo in 1992.

In 1996, Yechury played a pivotal role in shaping the General Minimum Programme of the United Front government, working closely with P Chidambaram and S Jaipal Reddy.

Later, in 2004, he collaborated with Jairam Ramesh to draft the UPA government’s Common Minimum Programme. Yechury is survived by his wife, Indrani Majumdar. The couple had a son, the late Ashish Yechury.