Meraj Muhammad Khan

Meraj Muhammad Khan died at a local hospital in Karachi on July 21, 2016, at the age of 77. He had been hospitalized for a serious respiratory and lung problem for some time.

In 1998, he joined the center-left/centrist Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) headed by Imran Khan, but resigned from the party in 2003, citing differences with Khan. He then joined the Mazdoor Kisan Party, which later merged with the Communist Party of Pakistan to form the Communist Mazdoor Kissan Party.

In 1973, Meraj fell out with the Bhutto government when Bhutto started to compromise on his so-called Socialist agenda and the regime resorted to repressive measures. As time passed, his differences with Prime Minister Bhutto grew and he left the PPP to reorganize the NSF. However, Meraj fell into political isolation, never to regain his political credibility and popularity.

In December 1971, Khan was appointed Minister for Manpower and directed the Ministry of Labour (MoL) in Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's government. In 1972, his tenure saw a major labour strike in Karachi; though it was peacefully resolved by Meraj's intervention. It was later reported in newspapers and television that the labour strike was actually a competition between two PPP ministers, Meraj and Law Minister Abdul Hafiz Pirzada for the control of the labour.

He was among those who founded the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) and fully endorsed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto for the PPP's chairmanship. Through the PPP, he went into mainstream politics and successfully contested the 1970 general elections on a PPP platform from a Karachi constituency called Lalukhait.

He became an active member of the National Students Federation (NSF), eventually becoming NSF's president in 1963. Khan turned the NSF into a militant student political organization that campaigned for the rights of students. In 1967, he quit the NSF after secretly learning of a socialist convention being held in Lahore, Punjab.

Meraj Muhammad Khan came to public prominence in the 1960s while studying at Karachi University. During this time, there was a debating competition in which students from all the colleges in Karachi were participating. At this competition, some activists of the Communist Party were sitting in the audience, who asked him to join the Communist Party after he won that debating competition.

After graduating from a local high school in Quetta in 1956, Khan moved to Karachi where he attended DJ Science College and later pursued his higher education at Karachi University in 1957. He earned a BA degree in philosophy and humanities in 1960, and a master's degree in philosophy in 1962.

Meraj Muhammad Khan (Urdu: معراج محمد خان; October 20, 1938 – July 21, 2016), was a well-known Pakistani socialist politician. He was noted as one of the key intellectuals and founding personalities of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) and as a major contributor to the initial left of center/social democratic so-called Basic Programme of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). He was also the founder of Qaumi Mahaz-i-Azadi which he founded after leaving the PPP in 1977.

Meraj Muhammad Khan was born on October 20, 1938 in Farrukhabad, Uttar Pradesh, British Indian Empire to an educated family of Zakha Khel Afridi tribe of Pashtun origin. He was the youngest of four sons and his father, Hakeem Molvi Taj Muhammad Khan, was a homoeopath who practised the methods of Greek medicine in Quetta, Balochistan. His elder brother was the Pakistani journalist Minhaj Barna.