The family of Communist Party of India-Marxist's (CPI-M) fifth General Secretary, Sitaram Yechury, donated his body to Delhi's All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) after succumbed to illness today, Thursday, September 12, as stated in a release by AIIMS, New Delhi.

The release reads that Yechury’s family has donated his body to AIIMS, New Delhi, for “teaching and research” purposes.

He was admitted to AIIMS, New Delhi, on August 19 for the treatment of pneumonia at the age of 72.

Yechury, who was born in Chennai and studied at Delhi's St Stephen's College and Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), was a three-time party chief after he took over Prakash Karat in April 2015.

Quite unlike his predecessor Prakash Karat, Yechury thrived on the challenges of coalition politics.

In this way, he was more akin to his mentor, the late party leader Harkishan Singh Surjeet.

Yechury was a close ally of United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Chairperson Sonia Gandhi throughout Manmohan Singh's ten-year tenure as prime minister.

He was the first non-Congress politician Sonia contacted after meeting with then-President APJ Abdul Kalam in 2004, when she declined the position of Prime Minister and advocated for Singh.

Polyglot, amiable, and an eclectic conversationalist who could hold forth on film songs as much as politics, CPI-M's fifth general secretary, Sitaram Yechury, was the pragmatic leader with friends across the political spectrum, stated a report by PTI.