Yechury elected new CPI (M) General Secretary

Visakhapatnam, April 19 (INN): Rajya Sabha member Sitaram Yechury on Sunday was unanimously elected as the Communist Party of India (Marxist) General Secretary.

Yechury is the fifth general secretary of the 50-year-old party. While Yechury and Polit Bureau member S Ramachandran Pillai were the frontrunners for the post, Pillai withdrew from the race in the last minute leading to Yechury’s unanimous election of Yechury.

Yechury was elected as All India Joint Secretary of Students Federation of India in 1978 and went on to become the All India President of SFI. He was also elected as the President of JNU’s students union. He was invited to the Central Committee of the CPI (M) in 1984. He got elected to the Central Committee in the CPI (M) 12th Congress in 1985 and to the Central Secretariat at the 13th Congress in 1988.

He became Polit Bureau member at the 14th Congress in 1992. In July 2005, he was elected to the Rajya Sabha from West Bengal in July 2005.

Speaking after his election he claimed that the 21st CPI (M) Congress was a “congress for the future” of the party, India and Left unity. He alleged that the Modi government has unleashed a new Trimurti – communalism, neoliberal economic policies and erosion of democratic practises. “We must ensure that this Trimurti unleashed by the Modi government doesn’t convert into a Trishul that will pierce the heart of India,” he said.

On the last day of the CPI-M national convention in Vizag today, election was also held for national party executive and a 16-member CPI-M Politburo was elected with Seetharam Yechury, Prakash Karat, Ramachandran Pillai, Biman Basu, Manik Sarkar, Vijayan, B V Raghavulu, Balakrishnan, M A Baby, Suryakanth Mishra, Padmanabhan, Brinda Karat, Mohd Saleem, Subhashini Ali, Hannar Molla and G Ramakrishnan.

The party’s new Central Committee has 91 members besides five special invitees and five permanent invitees.

Veteran leaders V.S. Achuthanandan, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya and Nirupam Sen have been dropped from the Central Committee.