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Syed Amin Jafri in Hyderabad
Veteran Naxalite leader and founder of People's War Group Kondapalli Seetharamaiah died in Vijayawada on Friday evening.
The 85-year-old Seetharamaiah leaves behind wife Koteswaramma and two granddaughters, V Anuradha and G Sudha.
His funeral will take place in Vijaywada on Saturday.
One of the founders of the Naxalite movement that took roots in Srikakulam district in Andhra Pradesh in 1969, Kondapalli Seetharamaiah broke away from the Communist Party of India, Marxist-Leninist, in 1974 and followed Charu Mazumdar's line of 'annihilation of class enemies'.
On April 22, 1980, he founded the People's War Group.
Believing in Mao's dictum 'power flows from the barrel of a gun', the PWG launched an armed struggle against 'class enemies'.
The PWG gained in strength by mid-1980s and recruited many young people across the states of Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, West Bengal, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.
In the early 1990s, there was a split in the PWG and Seetharamaiah was ousted by Muppala Laxmana Rao.
After the state government imposed a ban on the PWG on May 21, 1992, Kondapalli Seetharamaiah was arrested by the police in 1993.
He was released on humanitarian grounds after spending a few years in jail.
Born in Janardhanapuram village near Gudivada in Krishna district, Kondapalli Seetharamaiah worked as a teacher in Telangana region. He was attracted to left politics and joined the undivided Communist Party.
He was inspired by veteran Communist leaders Chandra Rajeswara Rao and Puchalapalli Sundarayya.
However, he fell out and joined the Naxalite movement and went underground in 1969.
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