Naimatullah Khan

Naimatullah Khan was a Pakistani lawyer and politician who served as the mayor of Karachi from 2001 to 2005. He was a member of Jamaat-e-Islami and a founding member of Pakistan People's Party. He was born in Ajmer, British India, and moved to Pakistan after the partition. He studied law at Punjab University and joined the chamber of Barrister Ijaz Hussain Batalvi. He was a vocal critic of the military dictatorship of Zia-ul-Haq and was imprisoned for participating in the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy. He later moved to Geneva and became the vice-chair of the Defence for Children International. He returned to Pakistan in 1988 and co-founded the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. He was elected to the National Assembly in 1990 and held several ministerial portfolios in the Bhutto government. He resigned from his office in 1996 and retired from politics. He was the first mayor of Karachi after the devolution plan under President Pervez Musharraf. He secured an amount of Rs. 2900 million for the reconstruction of Karachi and initiated various projects such as flyovers, underpasses, signal-free roads, and water supply schemes. He also imported buses from Sweden for the Green Line Bus Project. He was selected as a contesting candidate in the Top-20 Mayors of the World list in 2005. He died of natural causes in Karachi on 25 February 2020.