S.D. Sharma dead
Seven-day state mourning

NEW DELHI, Dec 26 (PTI, UNI) — A former President, Dr Shankar Dayal Sharma, died here tonight at a private hospital following a cardiac arrest, doctors attending on him said. He was 81.

The former President was admitted to the Escorts Heart Institute on October 9 following a severe cardiac problem.

Dr Sharma leaves his wife, Vimla Sharma, two sons and a daughter.

His wife and other members of the family were at his bedside at the time of his death. He was suffering from cardiac and breathing problems and had been put on a ventilator for some time in the recent past.

Dr Sharma, whose condition remained critical for the past one month, had recently undergone angioplasty. The body would be taken to his residence here, sources said.

Dr Sharma will be given a state funeral.

A seven-day state mourning had also been announced, an official spokesperson said.

The Prime Minister, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, and the President, Mr K.R Narayanan, tonight expressed profound grief over the death of Dr Sharma. Terming the death an irreplaceable loss to the nation, the President said Dr Sharma displayed commitment to secularism.

In his condolence message, Mr Vajpayee described Dr Sharma as a politician of high values, a distinguished parliamentarian and a great scholar.

The Prime Minister said Dr Sharma’s brilliant academic and political career was a saga of dedication and abiding commitment in the pursuit of higher learning and public service. In his death the country had lost a noted Gandhian and freedom fighter, he said.

In Mumbai, Maharashtra Governor P.C. Alexander said that in the death of Dr Sharma the country had lost a great statesman.

The Janata Dal (Secular) unit in Maharashtra described the former President as a man of principles.

Dr Sharma’s contribution in his capacities a Governor, minister and the President of India would never be forgotten, the party spokesperson, Prof Dhukende, said. The veteran freedom fighter’s death had created a vacuum in Indian politics, he added.

A grassroots Congressman, Dr Sharma will go down in history as the country’s President who had a mind of his own and boldly discharged his constitutional duties without fear or favour.

Holders of prominent public offices should set “salutary example of rectitude and of high standards of personal conduct and accountability” — Dr Sharma had said in his address to the nation on the eve of Republic Day in 1996. And he practised it.

Dr Sharma’s life-long association with the Congress did not prevent him from returning the P.V. Narasimha Rao government’s poll-eve ordinances for a shorter poll campaign period and extending reservation quota to Dalit Christians in 1996, proving his courage which he retained till his last day at Raisina Hills on July 24, 1997.

Born in 1918 in Bhopal, the erudite scholar and freedom fighter who braved British batons and jail during the 1942 Quit India Movement, capped his distinguished public life as a scrupulously impartial Head of State when he took over from Mr R. Venkataraman as the ninth President on July 16, 1992.