New Delhi, Aug 20 (IANS) Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) politburo member and chief of its trade union arm CITU, M.K Pandhe died at the Ram Manohar Lohia hospital here a little after midnight Friday following a cardiac arrest, party sources said. He was 86.

Pandhe was admitted to the hospital around 8 p.m. Friday after he complained of chest pain. His end came at 12.20 a.m. Saturday.

Born July 11, 1925 in Pune, Pandhe joined the undivided Communist Party in 1943 and rose through the ranks to become a secretary of the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC), a trade union wing, in 1966.

He joined the CPI-M after the division of the Communist Party in 1965 and was elected secretary of the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) in 1970.

He was elected to the CPI-M central committee in 1978 and took over as CITU general secretary in 1990.

Pandhe, a PhD from Pune's Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, became a CPI-M politburo member in 1998. A year later he became the CITU president.