Hayat Sherpao

Hayat Mohammad Khan Sherpao (Urdu: حيات محمد خان شيرپاؤ; 1 February 1937 – 8 February 1975), simply known as Hayat Sherpao, was a left-wing intellectual and socialist, who served as the 15th Governor of North West Frontier Province (now the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province) of Pakistan, as well as vice-chairman of Pakistan People's Party.

Co-founding the Pakistan People's Party with Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in 1967, Sherpao took the responsibility to govern the Sarhad Province at a difficult time when the country had lost East-Pakistan as a result of the 1971 war with rival India.

As governor, he oversaw the re-constitution of the provisional assembly, stabilising the law and order situation in the so-called tribal belt, and overseeing the success of covert operations in Afghanistan in 1975.

His governorship and Sherpao himself tackled and faced intense opposition led by Abdul Wali Khan, and was assassinated in a targeted bomb explosion on the campus of Peshawar University in 1975.

The surge in his popularity in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa is said to have cast many jealous eyes upon him and earned him a number of enemies, quite often in the form of seasoned and already established politicians from other mainstream political parties.

This popularity and political success, however, also led to him being dubbed the "Lion of the Frontier" or "Sher-i-Sarhad" by the Pakistan People's Party, and more specifically by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto.

[4] On the death anniversaries of Hayat Mohammad Khan Sherpao, politicians and other citizens renew their pledge for the establishment of an egalitarian society.