VISAKHAPATNAM: Senior leader Sitaram Yechury has been named the next general secretary of the CPM. Yechury and S Ramachandran Pillai (SRP) were frontrunners to take over the party leadership from Prakash Karat.
Yechury was chosen after SRP decided to withdraw from the race. Majority of the state factions supported Yechury at the new central committee meet in Visakhapatnam. A decision was not taken at the meet convened last night to choose the new general secretary. Prakash Karat suggested the name of SRP for the post. His name was backed by the Kerala unit. Yechury was backed by those including leaders from West Bengal.
As a decision could not be taken last night, the new central committee meet was convened Sunday morning. Biman Bose from Bengal proposed the name of Yechury for the post. When the two comrades stood firm for the race, SRP withdrew from it.
Yechury joined the SFI in 1974. A year later, he joined the CPI (M). In 1970 he stood first in his school leaving examination and joined St Stephen's College, Delhi. In 1975, he completed his MA in Economics from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in Delhi. Subsequently, he joined JNU for a Ph.D. degree which he could not complete due to his arrest during The Emergency.
He was underground for some time, organizing resistance to the Emergency, before his arrest in 1975. After the Emergency, he was elected as President of the JNU Students' Union thrice during one year (1977–78).
In 1978, he was elected as All India Joint Secretary of SFI, and went on the become the All India President of SFI. He left SFI in 1986. In 1984, he was invited to the Central Committee of the CPI (M). He was elected to the Central Committee in the CPI (M) XII Congress in 1985, to the Central Secretariat at the Thirteenth Congress in 1988 and to the Politburo at the Fourteenth Congress in 1992.
He was elected to Rajya Sabha from West Bengal in July 2005.
He is a columnist with Hindustan Times, a widely circulated daily.
He was born in a Telugu speaking Brahmin family in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. Yechury is married to journalist Seema Chisti, formerly the Delhi editor of BBC Hindi Service, she is presently the Resident Editor of Indian Express, Delhi. He has a daughter and a son from his previous marriage.
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