The age factor seems to have started taking its inevitable toll on the “ever green” Sindh Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah who, the sources said, had asked for a special table lamp to accurately read out the budget speech on Friday.
The veteran politician was born to an educated middle-class family in Khairpur district in the late 1930s and now is in his 90s. The PPP leader presented before the 168-member Sindh Assembly a deficit budget of Rs 686.17 billion for the financial year 2014-2015.
Having uninterruptedly been unveiling the fiscal plans for most of Pakistan People’s Party’s (PPP) last six-year reign, the aged chief minister this year found his eyesight not strong enough to read the budget document properly.
Shah routinely keeps highly sophisticated opticals on his nose indicating that the old chief minister faces some problem with his eyesight. “The chief minister had specially conveyed to the Assembly Secretariat that a table lamp be installed on his dice,” a source privy to the matter told Pakistan Today.
Friday’s sitting witnessed a white lamp having been placed onto a couple of thick budget books on the table of the leader of the house.
As the illuminating lamp was arranged the arrangers got entangled with an argument that whether or not the extra light would affect the chief minister’s looks on television screens during the live coverage of the all important budget session on Friday.
“We discussed the issue at length and finally agreed that it won’t (affect the chief minister’s facial looks on TVs),” the source added.
Jokes pertaining to Shah’s old age keep circulating through mobile phone SMSs. One such joke this reporter had once received read that the oldest, but visibly fittest, Sindh lawmaker was so old that he might have got his primary and secondary education at times of Moinjodaro and Harrapa civilisations, respectively.
A lawyer by profession, Shah, reportedly, had started upon his career in public life by participating in the local bodies election during Ayub Khan’s era and represented his district. He joined the PPP in late 1960s and contested and won the national assembly elections in 1970 and 1977.
