Disagreements between hardliners and liberals within the CPI(M) is nothing new, and the Left leadership has always encouraged internal debates since the inception of the party in 1964 when it broke away from the CPI with Puchalapalli Sundarayya as its first General Secretary.

The reason why the party leadership always allowed the flow of debates, as pointed out by several party veterans, was to keep an air of internal democracy flowing within the organisation.

CPI-M General Secretary Sitaram Yechury, who passed away at the age of 72 on Thursday, was a product of this liberal faction within the party.

His liberal approach towards the implementation of Communism and Marxism in the Indian context, coupled with his excellent articulation style with command over as many as eight languages, including his mother-tongue Telugu, made him the most acceptable mediator for all the constituents of the national non-BJP coalition for the last one-and-a-half decades, except for CPI-M’s arch-rival in Bengal, the Trinamool Congress.

Yechury, along with Congress leader P. Chidambaram, had drafted the common minimum programme of the Left Front-backed first United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government in 2004.

Also, when the CPI-M leadership under then General Secretary Prakash Karat decided to withdraw support from the UPA-I government over the Indo-US nuclear deal, Yechury as a politburo member accepted the decision, but chose to disagree with the logic behind withdrawing support.

In 2015, Yechury admitted that had the CPI-M withdrawn support from UPA-1 over public livelihood issues, it would have been acceptable to the people, but doing the same over the nuclear deal was something which the common people simply could not digest.

His deep understanding of international relations was reflected in his effective mediation with the Maoist rebels in Nepal to transit from the path of ‘people’s war’ to the track of ‘multi-party democracy’.

Being a liberal Marxist, like his mentor and former CPI-M General Secretary late Harkishan Singh Surjit and ex-West Bengal Chief Minister late Jyoti Basu, Yechury was always open to accepting the party’s strategy of an understanding with the Congress at the state level to fight the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal.

Because of the initiatives taken by Yechury and another former West Bengal Chief Minister late Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, the foundation for the Left Front-Congress seat-sharing agreement in Bengal was laid before the 2016 Assembly elections, which continued in 2021 and during the recent Lok Sabha elections.

Because of his liberal views, the West Bengal unit of CPI-M could continue with the arrangement with the Congress despite the two parties being arch-rivals in Kerala.

Also before the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, Yechury played the important role of a mediator for the opposition INDIA bloc, though much to the dislike of Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.