Leaders pay tributes to Yechury at CPI(M) headquarters

New Delhi, Sep 13: CPI(M) Politburo members and senior leaders paid tributes to Sitaram Yechury at the party headquarters here on Friday, a day after the veteran leader died following a prolonged illness.

Yechury’s body, kept in a casket adorned with flowers, was taken to the Jawaharlal Nehru University from the AKG Bhawan in the evening where hundreds of students and faculty members paid their last respects to him.

The CPI(M) general secretary died on Thursday at a hospital here after battling a lung infection. Yechury, 72, was in critical condition for the last few days and on respiratory support while undergoing treatment for an acute respiratory tract infection at the ICU in the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS). He was admitted to the hospital on August 19.

Yechury’s journey in politics started with the Students’ Federation of India (SFI) at JNU, where he was elected the students’ union president thrice starting in 1977.

DMK leader A Raja also visited the AKG Bhawan, the CPI(M) headquarters, and paid tributes to Yechury.

“The nation has lost a veteran leader who had deep faith in Marxism, democracy, more specifically secularism,” he said afterwards.

Raja also recalled that Yechury was one of the few leaders who contacted him after the Supreme Court judgment on the 2G spectrum case.

“When the 2G judgment came, only a few leaders called me over the phone immediately...,” he said.

CPI(M) leader Hannan Mollah termed Yechury’s death a great loss for the Communist movement and the Left. “It is a great loss... He was one of the great political leaders of the 21st century,” Mollah told PTI.

At JNU, Yechury’s body was kept in the students’ union office. With the famous “Laal Salam” slogan, Left supporters paid their respects to the stalwart.

“Long live comrade Sitaram Yechury,” read a banner placed above a garlanded photograph of the veteran leader.

Yechury is survived by his wife Seema Chishti, an editor with news portal The Wire and three children -- two sons and a daughter. One of his sons Ashish Yechury passed away due to Covid in 2021. He was earlier married to Indrani Mazumdar.