Veteran Congress leader, ex-union minister Murli Deora dead

Mumbai: Veteran Congress leader and former union minister Murli Deora passed away here early Monday following a brief illness.

He was 77 and he died around 3.30 a.m.

A former mayor of Mumbai in 1977-78, and later chief of the Congress Party's city unit for two decades, a four-time Lok Sabha MP from Mumbai South, he was a union minister for petroleum and natural gas and earlier handled communications and IT.