Khalid Kharal stands between PPP leaders Aitzaz Ahsan and late Fauzia Wahab in 2003. Photo: Twitter

LAHORE: Veteran bureaucrat-turned-politician Khalid Khan Kharal and close aide of former premier Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto passed away on Sunday. 

Sources said Kharal was suffering from an ailment of the lungs and was undergoing treatment at a private hospital in Lahore. 

Kharal's funeral prayers will be offered today at 5pm in Kamalia, Toba Tek Singh ? his hometown. 

Political leaders and party workers began arriving at his Lahore residence in Shadman Colony to offer their condolences after hearing of the news.

Initially a bureaucrat, Kharal served as the deputy commissioner of Larkana during Bhutto's tenure. He also remained in prison during Gen (retd) Ziaul Haq's regime. 

He later joined the Pakistan Peoples Party and served as a minister in Benazir Bhutto's cabinet in the 1990s. 

In December 2011, the former federal minister decided to join Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), along with other PPP leaders from Toba Tek Singh.

However, his association with PTI did not last long as in January this year, Kharal, along with his distant relative Faisal Saleh Hayat, decided to rejoin the PPP after a meeting with party supremo Asif Ali Zardari at Karachi's Bilawal House.