Having served as Sindh’s chief minister and as federal minister for education and defence, veteran politician Syed Ghous Ali Shah is a senior central leader of the Pakistan Muslim League - Nawaz (PML-N).

Born in 1934, Shah is the party's senior vice president and president of PML-N's Sindh chapter, a position he has been elected to on numerous occasions.

Shah was considered an exceptional criminal lawyer until he stopped practicing in 1979. During his years as a lawyer, he was elected as vice chairman of the Pakistan Bar Council for two terms in 1975 and 1979 and was later elevated to the position of a judge of the Sindh High Court.

During the regime of former military ruler Ziaul Haq, Shah was appointed as Sindh’s provincial minister and held different portfolios, such as education and culture and law, local bodies and rural development. He also served as Sindh’s chief minister from 1985 to 1988.

Shah served as the federal defence minister in Nawaz’s first government and was the federal minister for education during the PML-N chief’s second term as prime minister. The PML-N leader also worked as an advisor to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif before the latter’s government was ousted in a coup led by General (retd) Pervez Musharraf in 1999.

In 2008, Shah was said to be PML-N’s most likely candidate for the office of the president to replace Musharraf upon his return to Pakistan after years abroad. However, the party later named Justice (retd) Saeeduz Zaman Siddiqui as its candidate in the presidential election.

Shah has faced his share of criticism among the party ranks. Party workers opposed his nomination as PML-N’s Sindh president in 2012 citing damages to PML-N’s image during his long tenure on the post. Later in the same year, around 200 party activists tendered their resignations in protest against what they called a ‘biased decision’ of the PML-N’s provincial chief on a certain matter. They alleged that Shah was misguiding Nawaz regarding the party’s standing in Sindh and blamed him for creating a clique within PML-N’s Sindh chapter.

In 2013, Shah is contesting elections for both National Assembly (NA-215; Khairpur-I) and Sindh Assembly (PS-29; Khairpur-I) seats. With his vast political experience in Sindh, the party’s provincial chief is likely to emerge victorious.

— Research and text by Imran Kazmi