Former Speaker and Chairman of Constituent Assembly Subas Chandra Nembang was cremated with state honours at Pashupati Aryaghat on Thursday afternoon. The funeral rites were performed following the Hindu tradition.

The CPN-UML vice-chair and the party’s deputy leader, Nembang, 70, died on Tuesday morning due to cardiac arrest. He was rushed from his Baluwatar residence to the Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital, where he was declared dead.

Hundreds of people on the Bagmati riverbanks observed silence as siblings Mingso Nembang and Suhang Nembang lighted the funeral pyre.

Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal paid his final tribute to Nembang by draping the national flag on the body before cremation. UML Chairman KP Sharma Oli draped his body in the party flag as a final farewell to Nembang.

Top leaders, including Nepali Congress President Sher Bahadur Deuba, RPP Chairman Rajendra Lingden, Janamorcha Nepal leader Chitra Bahadur KC, and Speaker Devraj Ghimire, were present at the funeral, along with government ministers, other political party leaders and lawmakers.

A squad of Nepali Army gave a guard of honour with a 17-cannon salute.

Nembang’s body was kept at the Chyasal-based party office on Tuesday and Wednesday for his friends and well-wishers to pay the final tributes. On Wednesday evening, his body was taken to his home at Baluwatar to perform the rites in line with the Limbu culture.

Thursday meeting of the UML parliamentary party passed the condolence proposal on the demise of its deputy leader Nembang. The meeting at the International Convention Centre, Baneshwar, saw the chair on which Nembang usually sat beside Oli vacant.

Oli said nobody can take Nembang’s place in the exercise of the parliamentary system. He also lauded the government for the honour it gave to Nembang.

“Nembang became a statesman after successfully promulgating the new constitution. He united all leaders of the country,” Oli told the parliamentary party.

The government declared Thursday a public holiday. As per the decision, all government and most private institutions were closed to mourn his death.

Nembang served as the Speaker of the reinstated House of Representatives in 2007. He was elected the House Speaker later that year and served as the Constituent Assembly chair in 2008 and 2013. Nembang was re-elected Speaker in 2015.

Both chambers of the federal parliament on Thursday passed the condolence proposals on the demise of the House member elected from Ilam-2.

“Nembang’s death is an irreparable loss to the country,” said sitting Speaker Ghimire.

Nembang was a member of the National Assembly, the upper chamber of Parliament, after the 1991 parliamentary elections. In 1994, he became law minister in the minority UML government led by Manmohan Adhikari.

Recalling the delays in constitution promulgation in 2015, Oli said on Thursday that Nembang was worried after then-President Ram Baran Yadav hesitated to approve the constitution passed by the Assembly on September 20, 2015. Protests were then going on in the country, especially the Tarai, over some of the proposed constitutional provisions and the way the charter was finalised.

“If the promulgation of the constitution is blocked on September 20, not only the constitution, everything else will fall apart,” Oli remembered the words of Nembang in his Facebook post that came after the funeral on Thursday.