Salmaan Taseer

Taseer was born on 31 May 1944, in Shimla, British India, to a mixed-race family, being of Kashmiri descent on his father's side and of English descent on his mother's side. His father was Muhammad Din Taseer (M. D. Taseer), who hailed from Ajnala near Amritsar, and was a professor at Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College, Amritsar, having obtained his PhD in the United Kingdom. Taseer's mother was Christobel George, a British woman who, upon her wedding, converted to Islam and took the name Bilqis. Taseer's father died in 1950 at the age of 47, when Taseer was only six years old. Taseer and his two sisters were brought up by their mother in relative poverty, in an environment with strong Christian influences. He had little immersion in Pakistani culture, because his mother didn't stay in contact with her late husband's family.

Taseer attended St. Anthony's School where he was a classmate of Nawaz Sharif. He then obtained a degree in Chartered Accountancy from London.

Taseer set up several chartered accountancy and management consultancy firms early in his career. In 1995 he established the First Capital Securities Corporation (FCSC), a full-service brokerage house with equity participation by Smith Barney, Inc., USA, and HG Asia Hong Kong.

In 1996, Taseer founded the Worldcall group with a payphone network. Over the years, it become a major private-sector telecom operator in Pakistan. A majority stake in Worldcall was acquired in 2008 by Omantel.

In 2001, Taseer founded Media Times which operated an English news channel in Pakistan, Business Plus; a children's channel, Wikkid Plus; a cooking channel, Zaiqa; and published an English-language newspaper Daily Times and an Urdu-language newspaper Aaj Kal.

Taseer was married twice, and also had two confirmed extra-marital relationships. With his first wife Yasmeen Sehgal, he had one son, Shaan, and two daughters, Sara and Sanam. His second wife, Aamna Taseer, is chairperson of an investment management company. They have two sons, Shahbaz and Shehryar and a daughter, Shehrbano.

Taseer had a brief extramarital relationship with the Indian journalist Tavleen Singh. Taseer met Singh during a book promotion trip to India in March 1980. Their son, Aatish (born 27 November 1980), is a writer and journalist. According to Aatish, the relationship between his parents was an "affair (which) lasted little more than a week." Aatish is a freelance journalist in the UK and has written a book – Stranger to History: A Son’s Journey through Islamic Lands – about his estranged relationship with his biological father.

The other relationship that did not end in marriage was also with an Indian, actress Simi Garewal. His year-long affair with Garewal began in Dubai and ended when he married Aamna Taseer.

Taseer started his political career in his student era as a member of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) in the late 1960s. He was a part of the movement for Bhutto's freedom and opposed his arrest and death sentence. He also wrote a political biography on Bhutto titled Bhutto: A political biography (1980). Taseer was also known to be one of the trusted aides of Bhutto's daughter and political heir, Benazir Bhutto.

In the 1988 general elections, Taseer became a member of the Punjab Assembly from Lahore. In the 1990, 1993 and 1997 general elections, he stood for election to be an MNA but lost. In 2007, he was appointed the interim Federal Minister for Industries, Production and Special Initiatives. On 15 May 2008, Taseer was designated for the office of Governor of Punjab by the PPP-led coalition government.

In December 2010, Taseer was alleged to have left the country for several days without handing over charge to the Punjab Assembly Speaker. This meant that the province was without a constitutional head, and it also rendered the assembly speaker ineligible to preside over sessions. Leaving the province without informing his successor was in violation of the constitution and this led to Punjab Assembly Speaker Rana Muhammad Iqbal sending a letter to Prime Minister Gilani calling for the removal of Salmaan Taseer by the President. Evidence provided by ICAO on the governor's travel abroad led to a case being filed in court for breach of the constitution.