Veteran leader and General Secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), Sitaram Yechury, passed away on Thursday at the age of 73.
He had been receiving treatment for an acute respiratory tract infection in the ICU at AIIMS since August 19.
Yechury was born in Chennai to Sarveswara Somayajula Yechury and Kalpakam Yechury. He grew up in Hyderabad and attended All Saints High School before relocating to New Delhi following the Telangana agitation of 1969.
After finishing school, Yechury pursued a B.A. (Hons.) in Economics at St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, and later earned an M.A. in Economics from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). He began working toward a Ph.D. in Economics at JNU but had to halt his studies when he was arrested during The Emergency.
In the 1970s, Yechury was elected president of the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union three times, representing the Students’ Federation of India (SFI). By 1984, he was elected to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), quickly rising as a prominent full-time party member.
Yechury was known for his strategic approach to coalition politics, focusing on countering right-wing influence. Along with P. Chidambaram, he played a key role in formulating the common minimum program for the United Front government in 1996. Yechury had been a member of the CPM Politburo since 1992 and served as a Rajya Sabha MP from West Bengal between 2005 and 2017.