Bhagat Ram Vats, a former PTI senior correspondent who travelled extensively with first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru and covered the country's maiden Lok Sabha polls, passed away on Wednesday at the age of 97.
Vats was admitted at the AIIMS Trauma Centre where he was undergoing treatment for head injury he received after he fell down at his residence, a former colleague said on Friday.
He started his career with The Statesman, New Delhi, and later joined the Press Trust of India.
Vats travelled with Nehru for 14 years, covering his activities in India and abroad, especially his election tours in 1952, 1957 and 1962.
He spearheaded the opening of the PTI bureau in Moscow in the early 1960s. For half a decade, Vats reported from the erstwhile USSR and was given a lifelong Russian press accreditation.
He authored a book -- 'Foreign Intrigue Against India' -- on different aspects of the country's Partition and its neighbours.