Turning the tide: Illahi Bukhsh Soomro’s grandson joins PTI

Maula Bukhsh was too scared to break the news.

KARACHI: Senior politician Ilahi Bukhsh Soomro has been a Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz stalwart for years but his eldest grandson Maula Bukhsh Soomro has decided not to follow in his grandfather’s footsteps and joined the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) instead.

The younger Soomro, who is the eldest grandson of the former speaker of the National Assembly, heads the Defence and Clifton wing of the Insaf Student Federation (ISF) of the Imran Khan-led party. He is not the first member from his family to go this way. The elder Soomro’s brother Iftikhar announced he was joining the PTI about two months ago.

The 22-year-old Soomro told The Express Tribune that when he decided to join the ISF last January, he was too scared to tell his grandfather. “I had no courage, therefore it was my family who told him that I was supporting the PTI.”

Soomro says that Ilahi Bukhsh was “shocked” at the decision but he did not raise any objections. In fact, the youngster believes that if members of the Soomro clan had argued in favour of Ilahi Bukhsh Soomro joining the PTI, he might have considered it. “My grandfather has never had a problem with Imran Khan, in fact he considers him a leader,” he said over the phone from Islamabad where he had gone to attend a meeting. The Express Tribune could not immediately contact the elder Soomro to acquire his reaction.

For Maula Bukhsh, the ISF is the “most sincere, organised and disciplined” of student wings from any party. He can afford to make a comparison as he joined student politics by becoming the president of the Pakistan Peoples Party’s student wing in Lahore. “I decided to contest the elections just for fun and became the president,” he said. “But I quit the party in three months. They were in brawls and misused donations to buy alcohol.”

Aijaz Damrah, who is the president of the PPP youth wing in Sindh, said the allegations were unfounded. “There are some black sheep in every party,” he told The Express Tribune. “We do not rule this out. But I refute the allegations that the PPP student wing is involved in this menace.” For now, Maula Bukhsh Soomro, who has studied at Aitchison College, and holds a BCom degree, says that he is eyeing the position of vice president of the ISF’s Karachi division, currently vacant. “Our aim is to promote the ideology of our leader Imran Khan. After the successful 25th December rally in Karachi, we have been bombarded by requests from youngsters to join our wing.” Right now, it has 450 members, aged between 18 and 28 years old, in the Defence chapter alone.

Soomro claims that there are many youngsters in the ISF who have departed from their family’s political line.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 16^th, 2012.