Former Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit’s last rites will be performed on Sunday afternoon. The veteran Congress leader died on Saturday in a New Delhi hospital at the age of 81 will be accorded a state funeral.

Her body will be taken from her residence in Delhi’s Nizamuddin area to the Congress headquarters Sunday noon. It will be kept at the party headquarters between 12:15 pm and 1:30 pm for people to pay their final respects before her last rites Sunday afternoon at Nigam Bodh ghat.

“Her last rites will be performed at 2.30 pm at Nigam Bodh Ghat crematorium.” Delhi Congress said. Nigam Bodh Ghat is Delhi’s oldest cremation ground.

Instead of a traditional pyre of wood, Diskhit will be cremated in a compressed natural gas (CNG) machine as she had wished, her son and former MP Sandeep Dikshit told ANI.

Delhi’s Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia took to Twitter to announce that the Delhi government has declared a two-day state mourning for the Congress leader.

Thousands of party workers reached her residence to pay their tributes to Dikshit who was the Delhi chief minister for three terms over a 15-year period and also served as governor of Kerala for six months.

Diskhit was made the Delhi Congress chief in the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections, died of cardiac arrest.

She had undergone bypass surgeries in the past and had been in and out of hospital recently as she was not well.

First Published: Jul 21, 2019 08:59 IST