Sarat Chandra Sinha's wife Labanya grieves over his flower-bedecked body at their residence in Guwahati on Sunday. Picture by Eastern Projections

Guwahati, Dec. 25: Assam politics today lost its ?grand old man? and the state a leader of unimpeachable simplicity, honesty and integrity ? qualities that had fetched Sarat Chandra Sinha the epithet of ?barefoot chief minister? when he was at the helm in Dispur.

The end came at 1.30 am at the Gauhati Medical College Hospital, where Sinha had been admitted yesterday for treatment of renal failure. He was 92.

The government declared three days of official mourning for Sinha, who was chief minister from 1972 to 1978. He was cremated with full state honours at the Nabagraha crematorium in the city this evening.

Sinha would have been 93 on January 1, which is observed as Janatar Din (Day of the Masses) by his friends and well-wishers. The epitome of the phrase ?down to earth?, he used to often walk barefoot from the erstwhile Congress headquarters at Hedayatpur to Janata Bhavan, the seat of power, during his days as chief minister.

Former Lok Sabha Speaker Purno A. Sangma paid the ultimate tribute. ?I saw Mahatma Gandhi in him.?

Sinha, whose family consisted of wife Labanya and their two sons and three daughters, had only recently relinquished charge as the president of the Assam unit of the Nationalist Congress Party because of poor health.

Sinha was elected to the Assembly for the first time in 1946. In a political career spanning five decades, he became a legislator four more times. He was also the pradesh president of the Congress for two terms, 1964-67 and 1970-71. He quit the Congress in 1978 to head the Assam unit of the Congress (Socialist). He was also the national president of the party in 1987.

When the Congress (S) merged with the Nationalist Congress Party in 1999, Sinha became the president of its state unit.

A law graduate from Benares Hindu University, Sinha was a teacher before plunging headlong into politics. He was the headmaster of Birjhora High School, Bongaigaon, from 1942 to 1944 and of Chapar High School in Dhubri from 1944 to 1952. He also wrote a book, Ander Bidara Karh.

Chief minister Tarun Gogoi was among the first to reach Sinha?s residence at Beltola to pay tribute. He described the leadeer?s death as the end of a political era.

Leader of the Opposition Brindaban Goswami described Sinha as ?an idealist and an exemplary leader who led his life with moral conviction and simplicity?.

It was during Sinha?s tenure as chief minister that the Assam capital was shifted from Shillong to Dispur.