Former Madhya Pradesh minister and six-time MLA from Bhopal North assembly seat Arif Aqueel passed away here on Monday morning. He was 72.

Aqueel was admitted to the Apollo Sage Hospital here after he complained of pain in the chest on Sunday evening. As his condition deteriorated he was kept on ventilator support. However, he breathed his last on Monday morning while undergoing treatment.

Advertisement

Arif Aqueel was laid to rest at the Bada Bagh burial grounds in the afternoon.

The veteran leader had been unwell for over a year-and-a-half and doctors had diagnosed blockages in his arteries. He had undergone heart surgery in 2023 at the Medanta Hospital in Gurugram.

Aqueel was the cabinet minister for the Bhopal Gas Relief Department and Medium and Small Enterprises Department from 2018 to 2020 in the then-former Congress state government under Chief Minister Kamal Nath.

He was the minister of state for Bhopal Gas Relief and Minority Welfare Departments from 1998 to 2003 in the Congress government of Chief Minister Digvijaya Singh.

He had won his first Assembly election from the Bhopal North seat in 1990 as an independent candidate defeating former Congress minister Rasool Ahmad Siddiqui. In 1993, he contested his second Assembly poll on a Janata Dal ticket but lost to BJP’s Ramesh Chandra Sharma Guttu Bhaiya. From 1998 to 2018, Arif Aqueel won five Assembly polls in a row from the Congress.

He did not contest the 2023 Assembly polls due to ill health. His son, Atif Aqueel contested the polls on a Congress ticket and won from the Bhopal North seat.