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Former Maharashtra CM
Sudhakar Naik is dead

Former Maharashtra chief minister and Nationalist Congress Party politician Sudhakar Naik died in Bombay on Thursday following a heart attack.

He was 67 and is survived by wife, a son and two daughters.

Naik breathed his last in a private hospital, where he had been admitted a few days ago following complaints of breathlessness.

Naik, who was the Congress chief minister of Maharashtra between 1991 and 1993, was at the helm when Bombay was rocked by riots in the aftermath of the demolition of the Babri Masjid.

He was replaced by Sharad Pawar, who returned to the state as chief minister, when Naik's handling of the riots drew flak from many quarters.

Naik later became governor of Himachal Pradesh and held the post from July 1994 to September 1995.

He was elected to the Lok Sabha in 1998.

A nephew of Maharashtra's third and longest-serving chief minister, the late Vasantrao Naik, Sudhakar Naik hailed from Pusad in Vidarbha and rose from the ranks to become a member of the state legislature in 1977. He held many ministerial portfolios in Congress governments until he became chief minister in June 1991.

Naik joined Pawar's Nationalist Congress Party in May 1999 and became a legislator again in the October 1999 assembly election.

Naik's funeral will take place in Pusad on Friday.

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