CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury.
| Photo Credit: PTI

The passing of CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury, 72, at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) hospital in New Delhi on Thursday (September 12, 2024) sent shockwaves of sorrow and disbelief across every corner of Kerala’s political and social spectrum. 

As a mark of respect, CPI(M) offices across the State flew the party flag at half-mast. CPI(M) workers raised a black flag in front of the party’s State headquarters at the AKG Centre in Thiruvananthapuram. 

Also read: Sitaram Yechury death political reactions LIVE updates

Yechury was a seasoned leader: CM Vijayan

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan remembered Yechury as a seasoned communist leader who elicited the respect of the party’s detractors through his studied, gentlemanly, refined and insightful approach to politics.

Mr. Vijayan said Yechury guided the CPI(M) through difficult political situations during his nine-year term as the party’s general secretary. He termed Yechury’s passing a personal loss. 

Yechury was an astute politician, says V.D. Satheesan

Leader of the Opposition V.D. Satheesan described Yechury as an astute politician not limited by ideological shackles. Without losing his communist moorings, Yechury successfully guided the CPI(M) through dire straits of realpolitik in a highly challenging socio-political era. Mr Satheesan said Yechury realised Congress’s historical role in leading the country out of the divisive political morass spawned by the BJP-RSS regime early. 

Also read | Sitaram Yechury: Political timeline of the lifelong Communist

CPI State Secretary Binoy Viswam fondly remembered his decades-long personal and political association with Yechury. “He was an avid reader, an ardent smoker and a brilliant conversationalist. Pleasantness was the hallmark of Yechury’s character. The general secretary was also a Marxist intellectual who could wield ideology and practical politics with equal ease”, Mr. Viswam said. 

Left Democratic Front (LDF) convenor, T.P. Ramakrishnan, said Yechury was the party’s ideological lodestar. He said the CPI(M) central committee, bowing to Yechury’s wishes, would donate the leader’s body to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), where he died under medical care for acute respiratory tract infection. 

Yechury’s passing is a significant loss for the country: A.K. Antony

Former Union Defence Minister, Chief Minister and Congress Working Committee (CWC) member A.K. Antony told media persons in Thiruvananthapuram that Yechury’s passing was a significant loss for the country and INDIA bloc at a time when the political tides were turning against the BJP and RSS. “There was no day I would not enquire about Yechury’s well-being”, he said. 

He said Yechury was instrumental in bringing secular and democratic forces on a common political platform to defeat the BJP and prevent the country’s slow rightward drift to a Hindu majoritarian, anti-federal and fascist polity. 

CPI(M) Polit Burea member M.A. Baby said Yechury was deeply involved in planning the party’s 24th national conference in Madurai in Tamil Nadu in 2025 when death overtook the general secretary. 

CPI(M) Polit Bureau member A. Vijayaraghavan remembered Yechury’s heydays as a charismatic student leader at St Stephen’s College, New Delhi, and Jawaharlal Nehru University. He said the Indira Gandhi government had jailed Yechury for mobilising people against the draconian national emergency. 

CPI(M) Central committee member E.P. Jayarajan reminisced about his activist days with Yechury in the Students Federation of India (SFI) in the early 1980s. He said Yechury was an academically oriented and diligent student whose learning and politics marched in lockstep.