Accommodative Leftist, Delhi’s favourite comrade Sitaram Yechury passes away
Hindustan TimesCommunist Party of India or CPI general secretary Sitaram Yechury, 72, who was known as an affable and accommodative Leftist and arguably the most popular face of his party in recent times, died on Thursday, New Delhi’s All Indian Institute of Medical Sciences confirmed. Yechury, however, forged a strong bond with former Congress president Sonia Gandhi and the leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi much to the annoyance of some CPI and Congress leaders. When Congress leader Jairam Ramesh facetiously dubbed Yechury as “CPI general secretary for Congress” at a press conference, Sonia Gandhi reprimanded her colleague for putting Yechury in trouble. In his column Left Hand Drive for HT, he referred to Michael Jackson and Ustad Ali Akbar Khan in October 2009 and said: “This should also help settle, once again, the age-old philosophical battle between materialism and idealism by moving further to establish that the mind is the highest form of matter.” Yechury loved his 2019 Oxford Union lecture and remained an admirer of Mahatma Gandhi. Yechury retired from the Rajya Sabha four years earlier with House leader Arun Jaitley paying a rich tribute to his contemporary on the Communist leader’s last day as a parliamentarian on August 10, 2017.