Mumbai: The funeral ceremony of Congress veteran Abdul Rahman Antulay, who died here on Tuesday following prolonged illness, will be conducted on Wednesday.
Maharashtra's first Muslim chief minister and a former central minister passed away at the Breach Candy Hospital yesterday where he was admitted a few days ago. He was 85.
The funeral ceremony will take place in Antulay's village Ambet in Mhasla region of Raigad district.
He was the second Congress veteran to die within a few days in Maharashtra after former union minister Murli Deora expired in Mumbai on November 24.
Political leaders cutting across party lines paid glowing tributes to Antulay.
The state government announced a three-day state mourning in his memory.
Born on February 9, 1929, Antulay plunged into his social and political career in 1945 and later studied law in London and became a Barrister-at-Law.
Known as 'Barrister Antulay', he was the state's first Muslim chief minister, from June 1980 to January 1982 and a loyalist of then Congress president and prime minister Indira Gandhi.
The party's most prominent face in the Konkan region, Antulay served as a union minister in 1995 and later in the UPA-I government of prime minister Manmohan Singh.
(With IANS inputs)
