Sitaram Yechury (1952-2024): Convivial face of pragmatic Left, go-to comrade takes a final bow

NEW DELHI: Polyglot, amiable and an eclectic conversationalist who could hold forth on film songs as much as politics, CPM's fifth general secretary Sitaram Yechury was the pragmatic leader with friends across the political spectrum. The three-time party chief, who passed away on Thursday after a prolonged illness at Delhi's All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), took over the reins of the party when Left fortunes were on the decline. He was 72.

Quite unlike his predecessor Prakash Karat, who was known for hardline positions, Yechury thrived on the challenges of coalition politics. In this way, he was more akin to his mentor, the late party leader Harkishan Singh Surjeet.

While Surjeet was a key player in the coalition era during the National Front government of VP Singh (formed in 1989) and the United Front government of 1996-97, both supported from outside by the CPM, Yechury was the go-to man in the UPA years from 2004-2014.

Yechury, born in Chennai and studied at Delhi's St Stephen's College and Jawaharlal Nehru University, was a trusted ally of United Progressive Alliance chairperson Sonia Gandhi in Manmohan Singh's 10 years as prime minister.

He was the first non-Congress leader Gandhi called after she met then President APJ Abdul Kalam in 2004 when she turned down the post of prime minister and rallied for Singh.

Earlier, Yechury worked with Congress leader P Chidambaram to draft the common minimum programme for the United Front government.

It was an equation that survived the shock withdrawal of support by the Left to the UPA in 2008 over the Indo-US nuclear deal. Yechury played an important role in the discussions with the UPA government on the issue.

At the end of his tenure, he refused to take another term and said in his farewell speech in the Upper House that he came to Parliament “reluctantly”.

Yechury became general secretary of the CPM at the 21st party Congress in Visakhapatnam on April 19, 2015, taking over from Karat at a time the party was down from 43 MPs in 2004 to nine in 2014. He was subsequently re-elected in 2018, and 2022.

The alliance-building skills of Yechury, one of the most vocal critics of the Narendra Modi government and its liberal economic policies, came to use again for the Left in the run-up to the 2024 general elections. In 2018, ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the Central Committee of the CPM had rejected the proposal of having any understanding with Congress. Yechury had then offered to resign as the general secretary.

However, in the run-up to the 2024 elections, as talks for a united opposition grouping started and opposition parties got together to form the INDIA bloc, CPM was part of it, and Yechury remained among the key faces of the alliance.