Sitaram Yechury: A champion of socialism and coalition-building

Sitaram Yechury, the general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)), passed away today. He was one of the few Indians who sacrificed a secure middle-class life to serve the nation.

Born on August 12, 1952, in Chennai, Yechury hailed from a Telugu-speaking family. His father, Sarveswara Somayajula Yechury, was an engineer in Andhra Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation, and his mother, Kalpakam Yechury, was a government officer. Yechury grew up in Hyderabad and studied at All Saints High School until his tenth standard. The Telangana agitation of 1969 brought him to Delhi, where he joined the Presidents Estate School and achieved the All-India first rank in the Central Board of Secondary Education Higher Secondary Examination.

Yechury then studied BA (Hons) in Economics at St Stephen’s College in Delhi, and MA in Economics from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), achieving first-class honours in both. He joined JNU for a PhD in Economics but was forced to abandon his studies due to his arrest during the Emergency.

Yechury joined the Students’ Federation of India (SFI), the student front of CPI(M), in 1974. He was arrested in 1975 during the Emergency while still a student at JNU. After the Emergency, he was elected as the president of JNUSU. Yechury, along with Prakash Karat, played a crucial role in creating a solid leftist bastion at JNU.

In 1978, Yechury was elected as All-India Joint Secretary of SFI and later became All-India President of SFI, the first president from outside Kerala or Bengal. In 1984, he was elected to the central committee of CPI(M). In 1985, the party constitution was modified, and a five-man central secretariat was elected, consisting of younger stalwarts, including Yechury, Prakash Karat, Sunil Moitra, P Ramachandran, and S Ramachandran Pillai, to work under the direction and control of the politburo.

Yechury was elected to Politburo at Fourteenth Congress of CPI(M) in 1992 and as fifth General Secretary of CPI(M) at the party’s 21st party Congress in Visakhapatnam on April 19, 2015. He succeeded Prakash Karat, who had held the post for three consecutive terms from 2005 to 2015. Yechury was re-elected as General Secretary of CPI(M) at the 22nd Party Congress held in Hyderabad from April 18 to 22, 2018, and again at the 23rd Party Congress held in Kannur, Kerala, in April 2022.

Yechury was known for following the coalition-building legacy of former general secretary Harkishan Singh Surjeet. He worked with P Chidambaram to draft the common minimum program for the United Front government in 1996 and actively pursued coalition-building during the formation of the United Progressive Alliance government in 2004. Yechury headed the party’s international department and was often deputed as a fraternal delegate to socialist countries’ party conferences.

Yechury was married to journalist Seema Chisti, formerly with BBC. He had a daughter and a son from his previous marriage to Indrani Mazumdar. His daughter, Akhila Yechury, teaches in the UK. His son, Ashish Yechury, passed away in 2021 due to Covid at the age of 34.

Yechury was admitted to AIIMS on August 19 for treatment of a pneumonia-like chest infection.