NEW DELHI, Oct 15: Former chief election commissioner Manohar Singh Gill died at a south Delhi hospital on Sunday after a brief illness, according to people close to him. He was 86.
Gill will be cremated here on Monday, they said.
A former bureaucrat, Gill served under Parkash Singh Badal as a young officer when the Shiromani Akali Dal patriarch was the Punjab chief minister.
He served as the chief election commissioner (CEC) between December 1996 and June 2001.
Gill and GVG Krishnamurty were made members of the Election Commission when TN Seshan was heading the poll panel. It was then that the poll panel became a multi-member body, a former government functionary said.
He is perhaps the first former CEC to have joined politics. Gill entered the Rajya Sabha as a Congress member and was made the Union sports minister in 2008.
Gill is survived by his wife and three daughters. In a statement, the Election Commission said it deeply mourns the demise of Gill, its 11th chief election commissioner, describing him as a “brilliant officer of the 1958 batch of the Indian Administrative Services, Punjab cadre”. (PTI)
