ISLAMABAD, June 3: There are VIPs in our country and then there are VVIPs. But there can be some who are neither and still have to be put on the highest pedestal.

That is what happened to Sindh Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah when he reached Sindh House in Islamabad on Sunday evening to spend the night before attending the National Economic Council meeting the next morning and leave for Karachi.

Dawn has learnt that when he turned up at the Chief Minister’s Annexe in the building he was told that it was already occupied - by Faryal Talpur, the sister of his party chief, Asif Ali Zardari.

His staff cut a sorry figure but Syed Qaim Ali Shah, a gentleman and very unassuming, had no objection to settling down in one of the rooms in the main building of Sindh House which Benazir Bhutto had chosen to stay as prime minister in her first term.

Faryal Talpur was staying in the Chief Minister’s Annexe to take oath as newly-elected MNA on Monday. She was elected unopposed in a by-election held in Larkana following the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.