KARACHI, Jan 25: Veteran politician and chief of the Soomros, Sardar Rahim Buksh Soomro, who passed away on Monday, was laid to rest in his ancestral Panj Peer graveyard in Shikarpur on Tuesday evening.

Mr Soomro was 85 and was the last surviving member of the 1946 Sindh assembly. Besides family members, leading political figures attended the last rites of Sardar Rahim Buksh, who was the eldest son of Sindh premier Allah Buksh Soomro who was killed in 1943.

Sardar Rahim Buksh's political career was spread over 60 years. Born in 1919, he held ministerial positions in the cabinet of Mr Abdul Sattar Pirzada, Mr Yousuf Haroon, Mr Ibrahim Rahimtoola, Sir Ghulam Hussain Hidayatullah and Gen Rahimuddin Khan. He was elected a member of the Sindh Assembly on seven occasions and was twice elected to the National Assembly. He had four spells as provincial minister.

He was the first member of parliament to resign in the movement against Ayub Khan and was the only candidate who won a seat as an independent against the PPP candidate in the 1970 elections from Sindh.

But he later joined the PPP and in 1977 contested on a PPP ticket. In 1985 he resigned as minister for health and irrigation. He had remained a respected figure in Sindh's political and social life.