New Delhi. Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)) general secretary and prominent Left leader Sitaram Yechury died on Thursday. Yechury, 72, died at Delhi’s AIIMS (All India Institute of Medical Sciences), where he was admitted to the ICU for the past few weeks. He was admitted to the hospital on August 19 with acute respiratory tract infection. According to AIIMS sources, he died due to lung infection and multi-organ failure.
How was your early life?
Sitaram Yechury was born on 12 August 1952 in Madras (now Chennai) to a Telugu Brahmin family. His father SS Yechury was an engineer in the Transport Department of Andhra Pradesh and mother Kalpakam Yechury was a government official. Yechury received his early education in Hyderabad and moved to Delhi in 1969. He attended Presidents Estate School, New Delhi and was a topper in his educational career. He ranked first all over India in the Higher Secondary Examination. He did his BA (Hons) in Economics from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University and completed his postgraduate studies in Economics in first division from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in 1975. His studies remained incomplete due to his arrest during the Emergency (1975) during his PhD.
Political Career
Yechury’s political career began with his joining the Student Federation of India (SFI) in 1974. A year later he became a member of the CPI(M) and struggled for the restoration of democracy during the Emergency. In 1977-78 he became the president of the JNU Students Union, where the Left ideology took deep roots. Sitaram Yechury joined the Central Committee of the CPI(M) in 1984 and became a politburo member in 1992. He was elected general secretary of the CPI(M) at the 21st Congress session of the party held in Visakhapatnam in 2015. He was re-elected general secretary in 2018. Sitaram Yechury entered the Rajya Sabha from West Bengal in 2005 and remained a Rajya Sabha member till 2017. His factual and effective speeches earned him a reputation as an excellent parliamentarian.
personal life
Yechury first married the daughter of Veena Mazumdar, with whom he has two children. Later he married BBC journalist Seema Chishti for the second time. Sitaram Yechury was not only a politician but also a writer, economist and social worker. He played an important role in preparing various political documents. His writings include books like ‘Left Hand Drive’, ‘What is this Hindu nation’, ‘Ghreena ki Rajneeti’. He also edited works like ‘Diary of Freedom Movement’ and ‘The Great Revolt’.
