KARACHI: Elahi Bakhsh Soomro, the former speaker of the National Assembly, passed unexpectedly on Thursday from heart failure. He was ninety-seven.
His remains were sent to Jacobabad, his hometown.
His wife, Parveen Elahi Bakhsh, also died a day earlier. The family was devastated when the husband and wife passed away in the same day.
In 1926, Soomro was born in the Jacobabad area of Sindh. He came from the Shikarpur-based Soomro family, who governed Sindh for a long time. He was Ahmad Mian Soomro’s brother and the son of Maula Bakhsh Soomro. He earned an engineering degree.
Under Gen Ziaul Haq’s administration, Elahi Bakhsh Soomro was appointed as a federal minister for the first time. In 1985, he was elected to the National Assembly without facing any opposition.
In order to create a supervisory cabinet after overthrowing Muhammad Khan Junejo’s government, Soomro was proposed as the minister of communication and broadcasting.
On the Pakistan Muslim League platform, he was elected as an MNA in 1990 and 1997. Additionally, he was elected to the Senate multiple times during various terms.
He became a member of the Pakistan Muslim League-Q under Musharraf and was elected as the 16th speaker of the National Assembly.
Soomro maintained close ties with a number of prime ministers and presidents. He is claimed to have been a childhood acquaintance of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Benazir Bhutto, the late prime minister, used to refer to him as “uncle”.
In addition, he had a good friendship with the late Ghulam Ishaq Khan and PML-N leader Nawaz Sharif.
He served as chancellor of the Institute of Business Management in Karachi prior to his death, and he was elected chairman of the Pakistan Engineering Council four times in a row, each time for a three-year term.
In addition, he was the director general of the Karachi Development Authority. He continued to serve as the rector of other universities, such as the Jinnah Medical and Dental College, the NED University of Engineering and Technology, and the Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering, Sciences, and Technology.
