President to leave for winter sojourn Thursday

President Pranab Mukherjee will Thursday head to Hyderabad for the customary winter sojourn that will ends Dec 31, the Rashtrapati Bhavan said Wednesday.

Mukherjee will stay at Rashtrapati Nilayam in Secunderabad. He will then visit Tamil Nadu and Kerala and return to Andhra Pradesh.

In Tamil Nadu, he will inaugurate the 28th Indian Engineering Congress and the School of Commerce and Economics of Loyola College at Chennai.

In Kerala, he will unveil a statue of late K. Karunakaran, a former chief minister, in Thiruvananthapuram.

He will also inaugurate the 150th birth anniversary celebrations of Mahatma Ayyan Kali at Kochi.

On Dec 23, Mukherjee will head to Andhra Pradesh to attend the concluding function of the centenary celebrations of former president Neelam Sanjeev Reddy.