Sitaram Yechury, the president of India’s largest socialist party, has died at the age of 72.
He was admitted on August 19th, 2018, while receiving treatment for an severe respiratory tract infection at a Delhi clinic.
Yechury, the general secretary of the Communist Party of India ( Marxist ) or CPI ( M), was a key figure in India’s politics over several decades.
Numerous politicians have paid their respects, including former foe Mamata Banerjee and main opposition leader Rahul Gandhi.
Yechury began his political job with the left-wing Student Federation of India as a student leader. He was detained during the 1975 Emergency, when Indira Gandhi’s Congress government imposed a popular restriction of civil liberties.
After his discharge, he went on to become the leader of Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, where he studied economy.
He was particularly important during the coalition political era, when bringing up various ideologies and priorities was crucial to maintaining India’s stability.
He played a key role in forming a partnership of 13 events in 1996, which governed India for almost two years while two primary officials, HD Deve Gowda and IK Gujral, served on equal terms.
In 2004, Yechury’s group won a traditional 44 seats in the legislative election.
The Left functions, including the CPI ( M), next supported the Congress-led authorities from “outside”- a phrase used for supporting the presidency without taking governmental jobs.
However, they withdrew their support in 2008 as a protest against the Indo-US nuclear agreement, which required that India place its civil nuclear infrastructure under the view of the International Atomic Energy Agency in exchange for full legal nuclear cooperation with the United States.
The Left’s choice was contentious and was viewed by many as dubious because it failed to recapture its political victory in 2004.
By the time Yechury became the CPI ( M )’s general secretary in 2015, the party had lost many of its former strongholds, including West Bengal state, and its parliamentary seats were on the decline.
He was a part of the Rajya Sabha, or the lower house of parliament, from 2005 to 2017.
Congress chief Rahul Gandhi, with whom Yechury shared a nice relationship, called him a “friend” while paying his gift.
” A strong advocate for the Indian Idea and a thorough knowledge of our nation.” I will miss the long discussions we used to have”, he wrote on X ( formerly Twitter ).
Mamata Banerjee, whose Trinamool Congress ended the Left’s 34-year-old law in West Bengal in 2011, called his dying” a loss for regional politics”.