[1][2] Sikandar Hayat Khan was born in Multan, Punjab, British Raj in a Punjabi family of the Khattar tribe .

Later, for a brief while he also remained the acting deputy-governor of the newly established Reserve Bank of India in 1935,[13] prior to returning to take on party leadership in the Punjab in 1936.

[1] After an outstanding period of political enterprise between 1924 and 1934,[15][16] he was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire, Civil Division (KBE) in the 1933 New Year Honours list.

When Indian farmers faced a crash of agricultural prices and economic distress in the late 1930s, Khan took further measures to alleviate their misery in the Punjab [20] – similar steps were also taken by A K Fazlul Huq, the premier of Bengal, in working to relieve the Bengali peasantry from crippling debts to private sources, using both legal and administrative measures.

"[2][28] Later, he was also one of the chief supporters and architects of the Lahore Resolution of March 1940, calling for an autonomous or semi-independent Muslim majority region within the larger Indian confederation.

[31] Khan's final days as Punjab's premier were extremely troublesome and marred by controversies and bitterness:[32] since 1940 the Khaksars had been constantly giving trouble; he was having a rough time within the Muslim League with Malik Barkat Ali and others; and in the Legislative Assembly Bhai Parmanand and Master Tara Singh were questioning his increasingly inconsistent stance over Pakistan and Punjabi unity.

[33] Khan's legacy was challenged when Malik Khizar Hyat refused to comply with League demands in 1944, leading Jinnah to repeal the Sikandar-Jinnah Pact from 1937.

He has with great skill for a number of years kept together a delicate political mosaic and I am by no means [untroubled] as I write at the thought of what may happen, for Sikandar was well-known to be very non-communal in temper and outlook, and he had conciliated a far greater degree of general support in that most important Province than anyone whom I can think of as a possible successor is likely to manage to do.