Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary Sitaram Yechury passed away at the age of 72 on Thursday. He was critical and on respiratory support at the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Delhi for acute respiratory tract infection.
Sitaram Yechury passed away at 3:05 pm on Thursday, AIIMS confirmed, adding that the family has donated his body to the hospital for teaching and research purposes.
Yechury was being monitored by a multi-disciplinary team of doctors at AIIMS, the party had said earlier this week, adding that he was admitted on August 19 for treatment of a pneumonia-like chest infection.
Who Was Sitaram Yechury
Born in 1952, Sitaram Yechury's entry into politics was in 1974 through left-wing student organisation - Students' Federation of India (SFI). He joined the CPI(M) a year later.
Marxist politician Sitaram Yechury, a lifelong communist or 'comrade' - the name given to or how people who belong to the communist parties address each other - had been a member of the CPI(M) politburo since 1992 and had also been a Member of Rajya Sabha from West Bengal from 2005 to 2017.
Sitaram Yechury assumed charge as the fifth CPI(M) general secretary in 2015, succeeding Prakash Karat.
As per information found on online sources, Yechury grew up in Hyderabad and studied there till 1969, his tenth standard. The Telangana agitation of 1969, a political movement for the statehood for the region that was part of Andhra Pradesh back then, brought Yechury to Delhi.
He joined Presidents Estate School in Delhi and achieved the All-India first rank in the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) higher secondary examination.
Subsequently, Yechury studied Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Economics at St Stephen's College of the Delhi University and then Master of Arts in Economics from the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU).
Yechury's Arrest During The Emergency
Yechury also joined the JNU for a PhD (Doctor of Philosophy) in Economics, which he had to drop out of in 1975 due to his arrest during The Emergency.
On June 25, 1975, the then prime minister Indira Gandhi, imposed Emergency in the country, suspending civil liberties, jailing opposition leaders, activists and dissidents and effecting press censorship.
Before his arrest, Yechury had gone underground for some time, organising resistance to the Emergency, . After the Emergency, he was elected as the President of the JNU Students' Union thrice in a year (1977–78).
In 2021, Sitaram Yechury’s eldest son Ashish Yechury passed away at the age of 35 from Covid-19 complications .
