His daughter, Deputy Prime Minister Sujata Koirala, announced that he passed away at 12.11 pm Nepal time after all efforts to save him failed.

Koirala, who had been suffering from pulmonary diseases, slipped into coma early this morning. As if he had a premonition, he refused to go to hospital and chose to spend his last days in his daughter’s house.

His cremation will take place tomorrow with full state honours at Aryaghat on the banks of the Bagmati, overlooking the Pashupatinath temple.

In the last six months, he was very keen on promoting his daughter in politics though the central committee and the parliamentary party of the Nepali Congress, the party that he headed, were clearly opposed to the idea.

Koirala who served as Prime Minister five times without ever completing his fixed tenure after May 1991 found himself in the midst of controversies, the charges ranging from corruption to nepotism. But these never came in the way of his political rise, nor dampened his spirit and ambition. He rose to the peak of his political career in 2006 when he led a joint struggle for democracy.

Never known for forgiving political opponents, Koirala struck a deal with Maoists who had waged a decade-long insurgency against the monarchy. He gave up the Nepali Congress party’s long-standing principle that favoured parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy.

On the condition that he would be the first President of the ‘Republic Nepal’, his government piloted a Bill for abolition of the 240-year old monarchy in May 2008, but he soon fell out with the Maoists when they did not honour the commitment.

Koirala brought the Maoists to the peace process table in April 2006 with support and mediation from India but in the last few months, his effectiveness and control over Nepali politics was on the decline, both in the eyes of the people who had pinned great hopes on him, and the international community which thought he was the right person to steer Nepal during the transition. But after his death, the Maoists acknowledged that he was the “guardian of all of us today and his absence now will have an effect on peace and the constitution-making process”.

An ardent follower of his elder brother B P Koirala, the doyen of Nepali politics and one of the most respected figures in the international socialist movement, G P, who was born in Birpur in Bihar, was never known as a man of principle or purity of means.

In 1975, he masterminded the hijacking of a Nepal Airlines aircraft and “robbery” of Rs 3 million being carried in that plane for the central bank in Kathmandu to buy arms for a “political movement”. In a television interview 18 months ago, he admitted to manufacturing counterfeit Indian currency during the days of his political exile in India.

Yet the man commanded respect in India which no other Nepali ever did. In June 2006, Manmohan Singh went to the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi to receive him on his official visit as Prime Minister and called him “ a legendary leader of South Asia”.

Former U S President Jimmy Carter, who took great interest in the Nepal peace process, called Koirala “My Hero”. Last month, the Nepali cabinet recommended his name for the Nobel Peace Prize.