Malik Meraj Khalid, Pakistani lawyer and politician, Prime Minister of Pakistan (b. 1916)
Malik Meraj Khalid (Urdu: ملک معراج خالد; 1 February 1916 – 13 June 2003), was a Pakistani advocate, left wing politician and Marxist philosopher who served as prime minister of Pakistan in an acting capacity from November 1996 until February 1997. He was noted as being one of the original philosophers and founding personalities of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP).Born in 1916 to a poor farming family in Punjab, British India, he graduated in law from the Islamia College (Lahore) in 1942, starting his legal practices by establishing his own law firm in 1948. Inspired by the communist literature published in the Soviet Union, his initial public community work was aimed towards promoting the literacy in his native village. In 1967, he was one of the founders of the PPP and ascended towards holding the highly important public offices. Responsible for administrating and maintaining the control of the Punjab Province after the war with India in 1971, Meraj Khalid was appointed as law minister in 1974 and the Speaker of the National Assembly in two non-consecutive terms.However, his tough and rigorous Hard Left ideas led to developing political differences with Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in the 1990s, by whom he was sacked in 1996 after levelling accusations against Asif Zardari for the murder of Murtaza Bhutto. Being appointed as interim prime minister, Meraj Khalid then worked to rally the anti–Benazir Bhutto forces, and his efforts contributed to Nawaz Sharif and the conservatives' landslide victory in the 1997 parliamentary elections.