Khizar Hyat Khan Tiwana was the last Unionist Premier of Punjab, holding office from 1942 to March 1947 at the head of a coalition of Unionists, Congress and Akalis.
He was a Punjabi Muslim landholder from Shahpur district who did not accept the Muslim League's claim to represent Punjab's Muslims, and he was denounced for it in terms that made him one of the most attacked politicians in India.
His resignation on 2 March 1947, under sustained League agitation, removed the last government in Punjab that was not organised on communal lines. Rioting began within days, at Lahore and Amritsar on 4 March and at Rawalpindi and Multan on 5 March, five months before the boundary was drawn.
He went to Pakistan after 1947, withdrew from politics, and later moved to the United States, where he died in 1975.
His resignation is the single most consequential political event in Punjab in 1947 after the award itself, and it is not in most accounts of that year.
He was Premier of Punjab from 1942 to 1947 at the head of the Unionist Party, which held Muslim, Hindu and Sikh landholders together in one coalition across religious lines.
The Unionist arrangement is what Partition destroyed. Once it broke in the 1946 election, the province had no political vehicle left that was not communal.
He resigned in March 1947, left for Pakistan, later moved to the United States, and died there in 1975.