Profile of Mir Hazar Khan Bijarani

Sindh Minister for Planning and Development Mir Hazar Khan Bijarani, who was found dead along with his wife, former MPA Fariha Razzaq, was a veteran politician and experienced parliamentarian.

Born in Kamarpur village of district Kashmore’s Tangwani tehsil in 1946, he started politics from the platform of the Pakistan People’s Party in his student life. He belonged to a political family and his grandfather Sher Muhammad Khan Bijarani was a member of the Bombay Council before partition.

After the demise of his father MPA Sardar Noor Muhamamd Bijarani, he contested by-polls and was elected MPA at that age of 28. He was inducted in the Sindh cabinet and became minster of rural development. In 1977, he became MPA again and became provincial minister until the imposition of Martial Law by Ziaul Haq.

Later, he actively participated in the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy (MRD) and was very close to Benazir Bhutto during the anti-Ziaul Haq campaign. He was imprisoned for several months in Karachi and Sukkur jails. In 1986, Bijarani became provincial president of the party but after two years, he resigned from the position. In 1988, he became senator.

In 1988, he was made minister in the caretaker government and in the 1990 general polls, he was elected MNA from the then NA-157, a constituency comprising parts of Kashmore and Jacobabad, as an independent candidate, by securing 81610 votes, defeating the PDA’s candidate Mir Mehran Khan, who bagged 35818 votes.

However, in the 1993 general polls, the PPP’s candidate Mir Mehran Khan defeated him by a low margin of votes. Khan bagged 30970 votes while Bijarani secured 29864 votes.

Later, he joined the party of Mir Murtaza Bhutto, son of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and in the 1997 general polls, he was elected the only MNA of the PPP-Shaheed Bhutto faction from NA-157. In this poll, he secured 41325 votes while the PPP’s candidate Mir Imran Khan bagged 21979 votes.

In 2001, he rejoined the PPP and became MNA from NA-209 in the 2002 and 2008 general polls, bagging over 100,000 votes.

In the 2013 general polls, he preferred to contest on a PPP ticket from a provincial assembly seat, PS-16, while his son Mir Shabbir Ali Bijarani was elected from NA-209.

Bijarani was among the influential but also highly educated tribal chieftains of Northern Sindh. He attracted media attention in 2007 when he was criticised for presiding over a jirga which gave away five young girls as a form of compensation. However, after suffering humiliation for his role in the case, he subsequently kept a distance from attending jirgas and playing any role in tribal clashes. Bijarani was also author of two books – ‘Point of View’ and ‘An advocate of democracy’.