Protracted illness : Sindh governor passes away

Saeeduzzaman Siddiqui’s funeral prayers to be offered in Karachi on Friday .

KARACHI: Exactly two months after his appointment as the ceremonial head of the province, Sindh governor Justice (retired) Saeeduzzaman Siddiqui passed away on Wednesday following a protracted illness. Siddiqui, 79, is survived by a widow and a son — Afnan Siddiqui — who is also a barrister.

According to Governor House spokesperson, Siddiqui felt chest pain earlier in the day and was taken to a private hospital, where he breathed his last. His funeral prayers will be offered at the Polo Ground in Karachi on Friday (tomorrow).

Dignitaries including Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif have expressed sorrow over Sindh governor’s demise while Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah has announced a day of mourning on Thursday [today]. Under the rules, Sindh Assembly’s Speaker Agha Siraj Durrrani will be the acting governor till a new governor is appointed.



Siddiqui, a former top judge of the apex court, replaced Dr Ishratul Ebad Khan on November 11 as the 31st governor of Sindh. However, he had fallen ill soon after taking oath and had been admitted in a private hospital due to chest infection.

During his two-month tenure as governor, Siddiqui could hardly take up his official responsibilities and skipped most meetings – including the January 2 apex committee and the meeting on the Green Bus project presided over by President Memnoon Hussain at the Governor’s House.

Siddiqui was born to an educated middle-class, Urdu-speaking family on December 1, 1937. He received his early schooling from Lucknow in pre-partition India. Later, his family moved to the former East Pakistan where he did his intermediate in engineering sciences in 1952.

Two years later he moved to Karachi and did his bachelors in Philosophy and then LLB from the University of Karachi in 1958. After joining the bar in 1961, he practiced in both East and West Pakistan.

In May 1980, Siddiqui was appointed as a judge in the Sindh High Court, and was elevated as its chief justice in November 1990. Siddiqui was appointed a judge of the Supreme Court on May 23, 1992.

The legal experts say Justice Siddiqui was heading the apex court’s two-judge bench in Quetta, which had held in abeyance the appointment of then chief justice of Pakistan Sajjad Ali Shah. Subsequently, CJ Shah was removed after his fellow judges declared that his appointment violated the rules of seniority.

They believe that CJ Shah’s removal was the outcome of his confrontation with the PML-N government, as he was the only judge who dissented with the judgment of a 10-judge SC bench, which had restored Nawaz Sharif’s first government ended by then president Ghulam Ishaq Khan.



1999 coup d’etat

Siddiqui was appointed the fifteenth chief justice of the country on July 1, 1999 to confront a military dictator three months later on October 12, 1999, when General (retired) Pervez Musharraf took over and issued a Provisional Constitutional Order (PCO).

Siddiqui was one of the 100 or so judges who refused to take oath under the PCO, declaring it a deviation from the oath they took under the Constitution and a negation of the independence of the judiciary.

International acknowledgement

Justice Siddiqui was awarded honorary membership of the judicial fraternity of Australia and Canada in January 2000. He also received a letter of commendation from the judiciary of the United Kingdom and the United States Supreme Court for his stand in the cause of Pakistan’s judiciary.

Since his removal, Siddiqui led a quiet life far away from the public eye until 2008 when the PML-N and the Jamaat-e-Islami jointly fielded him as a presidential candidate following General Musharraf’s resignation under pressure of impeachment. However, he lost to the PPP Co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 12^th, 2017.