In a condolence message the Minister of Information & Broadcasting, Smt. Sushma Swaraj said that with the sad demise of Shri Rais Mirza, the country has lost a great journalist, columnist and a progressive writer and thinker. Shri Rais Mirza always stood for the cause of downtrodden and upheld the time cherished values of communal harmony and national integration. Shri Mirza was also a central figure in the cultural & literary life of the city, she said.