March 3: The final rites of former finance minister Bharat Mohan Adhikari will be performed at Pashupati Aryaghat on Sunday. The prominent Communist leader who was suffering from lungs and heart related aliments breathed his last on Saturday night. He was 82.

According to Nepal Communist Party, leader Adhikari was undergoing treatment at Dhumbarahi-based HAMS Hospital since the past three weeks.

His body has been kept at the party headquarters in Dhumbarahi since Sunday morning for paying last respects. After paying tribute in the afternoon, his body is to be taken to Pashupati for cremation, according to the party’s central office secretary Krishna Gopal Shrestha.

He is credited for initiating social security allowance for senior citizens during the government led by the then UML Chairman Manmohan Adhikari - his elder brother – when the was the finance minister about two decades ago. Late Adhikari, who was elected as member of parliament for four times, also held the portfolio of Minister for Physical Planning and Construction and the Law Minister in his political career.