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CPI (M) General Secretary Sitaram Yechury Passed Away

  • By Thetripurapost Desk, New Delhi
  • Sep 12, 2024
  • 473

CPI (M) General Secretary Sitaram Yechury has passed away. He was admitted to AIIMS hospital in Delhi for the last several days. According to the information received, 72-year-old Sitaram Yechury was undergoing treatment for acute respiratory tract infection in AIIMS. He was on respiratory support for the last several days.

Sources told news agency PTI that Sitaram Yechury died at 3:05 pm. CPI (M) had issued a statement on Tuesday saying that Sitaram Yechury has been put on artificial ventilation system in AIIMS. It was told that he is being treated for respiratory tract infection. Yechury was admitted to AIIMS on August 19 for the treatment of pneumonia-like infection in the chest. 

Sitaram Yechury was made the general secretary of CPM in 2015 after Prakash Karat. He learned the basics of politics under the guidance of late party veteran Harkishan Singh Surjeet. Sitaram Yechury joined the Students Federation of India (SFI) in 1974 and became a member of the party the very next year. He was arrested a few months later during the Emergency.

Harkishan Singh Surjeet had earlier played a key role in coalition era governments during V P Singh's National Front government and the 1996-97 United Front government, both of which were supported by the CPI(M) from outside. Once considered one of the prominent faces of the opposition opposing the Congress, Sitaram Yechury became a prominent face in coalition efforts in national politics from the mid-1990s. At that time he came together with various factions of the Janata Party to keep the Congress out of power.

However, in 1996, when Jyoti Basu could have become the Prime Minister, he, along with Prakash Karat, opposed this decision. Jyoti Basu himself openly called this decision a historical mistake. Yechury further honed his skills when the leftist parties supported the first UPA government and often pressured the Congress-led government in policy-making.

Sitaram Yechury also played a key role in discussions with the UPA government on the issue of the Indo-US nuclear deal. However, in 2008 the Left parties withdrew their support to the government on this issue, mainly due to the adamant stand of Prakash Karat.

In an interview to PTI after taking over as party general secretary in 2015, Yechury had said that he should have withdrawn support on issues like inflation as people could not be organised on the issue of nuclear deal in the 2009 general elections. Yechury was known for his strong and clear speeches in the Rajya Sabha on various issues. He was multilingual and could speak Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Bengali and Malayalam.

He was also well versed in Hindu mythology and often used those references in his speeches, especially to attack the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He was one of the most vocal critics of the Narendra Modi government and its liberal economic policies. In 2018, before the 2019 Lok Sabha election, the CPI(M) Central Committee rejected any proposal for an alliance with the Congress, with party general secretary Yechury even offering to resign. However, during the 2024 general election, when talks began for a united opposition and opposition parties came together to form the 'India' alliance, the CPI(M) was a part of it and Yechury remained one of the prominent faces of the alliance