India's former Chief Election Commissioner SY Quraishi to marry Nepal's EC

New Delhi: Former chief election commissioner of India Shahabuddin Yaqub Quraishi and Nepal’s current election commissioner Ila Sharma may marry soon, reports said.

According to a report in The Telegraph, 69-year-old Quraishi and 49-year-old Sharma came close after they met at a conference in Mexico in September 2015. Though the two have not spoken about their marriage plans, Quraishi has said that the two have a “personal bond between” them.

Their plans to marry were deferred twice earlier because of slight resistance from their families, the newspaper quoted sources as saying.

Quraishi is a 1971-batch IAS officer and St. Stephen's alumnus. He is divorced from Humra Quraishi, a journalist and columnist.

Sharma, a former journalist, graduated with a law degree from Gorakhpur University in Uttar Pradesh and also holds a bachelor's degree in Sanskrit and Nepali literature from the Sampurnanand Sanskrit University in Varanasi.

She was married to police inspector Nawaraj Poudel, who was killed by Maoists in Nepal about 15 years ago. She has two daughters.