Union minister and Bharatiya Janata Party leader Ananth Kumar was cremated with full state honours in Karnataka’s capital Bengaluru on Tuesday, NDTV reported The 59-year-old minister, who died of lung cancer on Monday, was given a 21-gun salute and a guard of honour.

In the morning, Kumar’s body was taken from his residence to the BJP state office in Malleshwaram. A procession was taken out from the BJP office to the National College grounds, where the public paid their respects. The last rites were performed at the Chamrajpet crematorium. Kumar’s younger brother Nanda Kumar lit the funeral pyre, PTI reported.

Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP President Amit Shah, former Deputy Prime Minister LK Advani, and Union ministers Rajnath Singh, Nirmala Sitharaman, Rajnath Singh, Piyush Goyal and Ravi Shankar paid tribute to Kumar. Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy, and Congress leaders DK Shivakumar and Dinesh Gundu Rao also paid respects to the minister.

“We have lost an outstanding public servant, who had a positive impact on the lives of many,” Modi said. Ananth Kumar was “an able administrator and a great son of our soil”, the Hindustan Times quoted Naidu as saying.

The Union Cabinet condoled Ananth Kumar’s death and observed a two-minute silence. The state government has announced a holiday on Monday and will observe three days of mourning.

Kumar was the Union minister for parliamentary affairs since July 2016. He has represented Bengaluru South constituency in the Lok Sabha since 1996. He was also the minister of chemicals and fertilisers since the Narendra Modi government came into power in May 2014. He handled several other ministries in previous governments.