Liaquat Habib Merchant

Merchant, 68, is the grandchild of Quaid's sister Mariam Bai and his last name comes from the fact that his father, Habib Hussain, was a businessman in Bombay.

Merchant was also awarded the Sitara-e-Imtiaz for his outstanding public services for the education and health sectors in the country during Pervez Musharraf’s regime.

Merchant is a reputed lawyer in Karachi and his daughter Fouzia and son Akbar, are also lawyers, which is now sort of a family profession. His other daughter, Faiza, is a teacher.

As a young lawyer, Merchant first visited Karachi in 1964 and met Fatima Jinnah while she was living in Mohatta Palace. She insisted that he migrate from India. He returned to India but moved to Karachi in December 1967 after getting married in October and since than he is practicing law in Karachi.

Today he runs Liaquat Merchant Associates, one of the most respected law firms in the country, in addition to being the administrator of Quaid-e-Azam’s estate established under the Aligarh Education Trust, Jinnah Foundation and tending to several other charities. He said that till date Aligarh Education Trust has provided educational scholarships to 5,000 students in 15 different fields including law, architecture, civil engineering, dairy farming and so on.