
INDIA’S FORMER PRESIDENT Pranab Mukherjee, a senior leader of the country’s opposition Congress party, has died after contracting Covid-19.
The 84-year-old had emergency surgery for a blood clot in his brain on 10 August at New Delhi’s Army Hospital Research and Referral.
The hospital said he tested positive for Covid-19 after the surgery and his condition was critical. He remained in a coma after the surgery.
The hospital said his health began declining on Monday after a lung infection resulted in septic shock.
His son, a former MP in India Abhijeet Mukherjee, tweeted in the evening that he had died.
Mukherjee was president from 2012 to 2017, during a long period when the Congress party held power. The office is largely ceremonial in India, with executive powers resting with the prime minister.
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Before that, he had been finance, defence and foreign minister for three separate prime ministers and helped manage their fractious governing coalitions.

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