In a rather embarrassing development, Federal Minister for Information Shibli Faraz on Friday had to delete a tweet criticising the opposition after he was told that the poetry he had shared as that of his father, Ahmad Faraz, was actually a ghazal by Mirza Ghalib.
“Jiski bahaar yeh ho uski khizaa naa pooch [don’t ask about the autumn of whose spring is this],” the minister said in the deleted tweet aimed at mocking the joint opposition for what the government called was “an empty stadium” in Gujranwala during the maiden public gathering of the opposition parties’ anti-government campaign.
The tweet was deleted after journalist and Geo News Managing Director Azhar Abbas told him that the phrase the minister had attributed to his father and late poet Ahmad Faraz was actually from a ghazal by classical Urdu poet from the 19th Century, Mirza Ghalib.
“I think it’s Ghalib’s not Ahmad Faraz’s,” Abbas tweeted.
Shibli Faraz, who is serving as the federal minister for information and broadcasting since April 28, 2020, is a member of the Senate from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) since 2015. He is the son of the late renowned poet Ahmad Faraz, who was displaced by dictators for also being a vocal critic of military rule.
