Mumbai, Dec 2 (PTI): Senior Congress leader A.R. Antulay passed away here Tuesday after a prolonged illness. He was 85.

Antulay, a former chief minister of Maharashtra and also a minister in the first United Progressive Alliance government, had been suffering from a kidney ailment. He passed away at around 10am, his son-in-law Mushtaq Antulay told PTI.

The funeral will take place at his native Ambet village in Raigad district on Wednesday.

Antulay, during his short term as Chief Minister, was known for his quick decision-making and also several innovative measures.

“Delays in implementation of decisions were not acceptable to him. He was instrumental in initiating the Sanjay Gandhi Niradhar Yojana, monthly financial aid to destitute and poor people and also MLA pension. Similarly, the housing facilities for MLAs in Mumbai was also his brain child,” a senior Congress leader said today.

Born on February 9, 1929, at a village in Raigad district, Antulay, who studied law in the UK, was active in Congress since his younger days and rose from the district level to become general secretary of the Maharashtra unit when Chief Minister Vasantdada Patil was its president.

Antulay, a loyalist of the late Indira Gandhi, later moved to the All India Congress Committee as general secretary.

He was a member of the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly from 1962 to 1976 from Srivardhan constituency in Raigad, during which time he served in the state government as Minister of State and Cabinet Minister, holding several portfolios.

He was a member of Rajya Sabha from 1976 to 1980. In 1980, he was again elected to the Maharashtra Assembly and served as Chief Minister of the state for a short term from June 1980 to January 1982.

He was forced to resign as Chief Minister in 1982 following allegations that a trust controlled by him had taken donations from builders in return for more cement than allowed by government quotas. But the Supreme Court had later cleared him of the allegations.

The leader again got elected in 1985 to the state Assembly and remained until 1989, when he was elected to the 9th Lok Sabha from Kolaba, which later came to be known as Raigad.

He was re-elected to the 10th Lok Sabha in 1991.

From June 1995 to May 1996, he was Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare, and from February to May 1996 he was given an additional in-charge of Water Resources.

In 1996, he was re-elected to the 11th Lok Sabha, and in 2004 he was elected to the 14th Lok Sabha.

He was Union Minister for Minority Affairs in Manmohan Singh's UPA-I government.

After the November 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, he stoked controversy by saying that the death of Maharashtra ATS chief Hemant Karkare in the attack may have been related to his investigation of the 2006 Malegaon blasts.

Though recently he was not active in politics after his defeat in the 2009 Lok Sabha election, Antulay virtually rebelled against Congress by extending his support to Peasants & Workers Party nominee Ramesh Kadam in the Raigad constituency during the Lok Sabha polls earlier this year.

The Congress stalwart's decision to challenge the party leadership was following the Congress' move to give away the Raigad seat to its then ally, the Nationalist Congress Party.

Antulay was quite upset over the Raigad seat ticket being given to NCP without consulting him.

Notably, NCP leader Sunil Tatkare lost from the seat by a narrow margin to Shiv Sena's Anant Geete in the 2014 Lok Sabha election.