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Pir Pagara VIII, Syed Sibghatullah Shah Rashdi ...

Pir Pagara VIII, Syed Sibghatullah Shah Rashdi (Raja Saeen Shah), 55, started his political career during the era of General Ziaul Haq when he was elected an MPA in the non-party elections of 1985. He was elected to the Sindh Assembly two other times. He also served as minister for irrigation, works and services in the Sindh government.

In the 1988 elections, he was defeated on his home seat of Pir jo Goth but was elected from Sanghar. Pir Ali Taqi Shah, the younger son of Ghulam Qadir Shah Jillani, who was considered a rival of Pir Pagara, won the seat on a Pakistan Peoples Party ticket. However, in the 1990 election, Raja Saeen managed to secure his Pir jo Goth seat by defeating PPP candidate Rahim Bux Wasan, the elder brother of Sindh Home Minister Manzoor Wassan.

Raja Saeen was, however, asked by the Hur Jamaat to dissociate himself from politics and concentrate more on the affairs of the Jamaat. Later he went to the UAE and stayed there till 2007 when he was again appointed a minister in the provincial caretaker set-up.

He married a cousin of Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani. But when his father (Pir Pagaro) divorced his first wife in 1992, Raja Saeen had no choice, but to break his marriage. It was done following a decision of the Jamaat. His second wife is from an Arab family of the UAE.

He has four sons and two of them – Pir Rashid Shah and Umar Shah – are active in local politics.