Profile: After a lifetime of law, comes politics

The caretaker chief minister headed the commission on the Baldia factory fire.

KARACHI:

Sindh’s caretaker chief minister, 73-year-old Justice (rtd) Zahid Qurban Alvi, has spent his life committed to law but it seems that politics is on the cards too.

Apart from leading several commissions and serving as a judge of the Sindh High Court, Alvi’s political inclination can be traced back to his father, Qurban Alvi, who was friends with Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. His grandfather, Hatim Alvi, was the first Muslim mayor of Karachi before the sub-continent’s partition.

Alvi, who belongs to the Bohri community, was born on August 21, 1941 in Karachi. He passed his matriculation from the St Patrick’s School and intermediate from St Patrick’s College. He received his LLB and MA in International Relations from the University of Sindh, Jamshoro and started practicing law after his graduation in June, 1966.

The only Pakistani to be interviewed by the Club of Rome on “Young Leaders of the World”, Alvi was recognised by the European Community for his 20 years of service for the handicapped.

He was appointed as a judge of the Sindh High Court in 1997 and retired in 2003. Justice Alvi has taken on several responsibilities since 2008, including taking charge as Sindh’s Zakat Council’s chairperson and serving in different commissions constituted by the government. He was also the head of the commission constituted to determine causes of breaches in embankments of Indus River in the floods 2010.

The caretaker chief minister headed the judicial commission on the Baldia factory fire as well as one constituted by the Sindh government to assess the loss of lives and property after the verdict of the Supreme Court in the Karachi violence case.

Before being selected as the caretaker chief minister, Alvi was the chairperson of the Sindh Land Committee.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 21^st, 2013.