Eminent jurist LM Singhvi passes away

Former Rajya Sabha member and eminent jurist L M Singhvi died here today of a heart attack. He was 76. inghvi, who was ailing for the past few weeks, is survived by his wife, a daughter; and son Abhishek Singhvi, who is a Congress party spokesperson.

New Delhi, Oct 6 : Former Rajya Sabha member and eminent jurist L M Singhvi died here today of a heart attack. He was 76. inghvi, who was ailing for the past few weeks, is survived by his wife, a daughter; and son Abhishek Singhvi, who is a Congress party spokesperson.

President Pratibha Patil has expressed her grief over the death of the legal luminary.

His last rites will be performed on Sunday morning.

Singhvi, a scholar of Jain history and culture, was born in Jodhpur in 1931.

He was India's longest-serving (1991-1997) High Commissioner in the United Kingdom and was conferred the Padma Bhushan in 1998.

He was also a constitutional expert, a linguist, prolific author, litterateur and a patron of arts.

He served the Lok Sabha from 1962 to 1967 and the Rajya Sabha from 1998 to 2004.

Singhvi headed the High-Level Committee on Indian diaspora and had been studying the relations between India and its diaspora since he was a law student at Harvard in 1951.

He is credited for conceiving the idea of organising the annual Pravasi Bharatiya Divas.

A supporter of human rights, Singhvi led the Indian delegation to the UN Conference on Human Rights in Vienna in 1993.

He was advocate general of Rajasthan from 1972 to 1977.

Singhvi's works include "Towards Global Togetherness", "Democracy and the Rule of the Law", "Freedom on Trial", "Jurisprudence of Non-Violence"; and "Sandhya ka Suraj", which is a volume of Hindi poems.

Singhvi was President of the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, besides being a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague and the Commission of Inquiry into Administration of Justice in Trinidad and Tobago.

ANI