Bengaluru: Karnataka’s Congress leader C K Jaffer Sharief who passed away on Sunday at the age of 85 had joined the party as a young worker and driver.
He was the man who had heard the conversation of the then Congress president S Nijalingappa’s plans to split the party during the then PM Indira Gandhi’s rule in 1969.
He was Gandhi family’s loyalist who later went on to become an MP eight times and also rose to become the railway’s minister in the 1980s.
He remained undefeated after winning his first election in 1971 until 2004 from the Bangalore North constituency.
But in the last years of his life, Sharief seemed to desert the Gandhi family, Indian Express reports.
The Congress party, however, compensated him by giving his grandson Abdul Rehman Sharief a ticket for the 2016 Assembly by-election from Bengaluru but unfortunately, he lost.
Despite hailing from a poor family and uneducated Sharief was one of the most influential Muslim leaders in Karnataka.
He passed away two days after suffering from a heart attack. Many Congress leaders including Sonia Gandhi, and Karnataka Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy all paid tributes to Sharief.