♦ Veteran Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary Sitaram Yechury passed away in New Delhi on 12 September 2024. He was 72 years old. He was born in Chennai on 12 August 1952.
♦ Yechury served as a Rajya Sabha MP for 12 years, from 2005 to 2017.
♦ He assumed the role of the fifth general secretary of the CPI(M) at the 21st party congress in Visakhapatnam on 19 April 2015, succeeding Prakash Karat and was re-elected to the position in 2018 and 2022.
♦ Yechury’s political career began in 1974 with his involvement in the Students’ Federation of India (SFI). In 1984, he was elected to the Central Committee of the CPI(M) as a permanent invitee. By 1992, he had ascended to the Politburo, a role he held for over thirty years.