Expansion: AJK inducts four new faces into cabinet

PML-N bags two more seats in Kashmir council

MUZAFFARABAD: The Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) government on Thursday inducted three more ministers and a special advisor into its cabinet.

The new ministers were administered their oaths by AJK President Sardar Masood Khan at the President Secretariat in Muzaffarabad on Thursday.

Chaudhry Muhammad Saeed, Shaukat Shah and Nasir Dar are the three new ministers inducted. Khan Bahadur Khan, meanwhile, was appointed as a special advisor to Prime Minister Raja Farooq Haider.

Saeed hails from Mirpur while Shaukat Shah and Nasir Dar represent the refugees from Indian Occupied Kashmir (IOK) who had settled in Pakistan.

Khan had won the general elections in July on a Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) ticket from Rawalakot.

“The public gave us a mandate on behalf of PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif, who has told us to follow merit and work for the supremacy of law,” said Dar after the oath taking ceremony.

“The whole team [cabinet] is united under the leadership of Prime Minister Haider,” he added.

PML-N wins upper house seats

Meanwhile, the ruling PML-N won two seats in the Kashmir Council, upper house of AJK’s assembly.

Polling for the seats started at around 10am in the AJK Legislative Assembly Hostel.

PML-N’s Abdul Khaliq Wasi bagged 20 while Muhammad Sadiq Chaudhry secured 18 votes.

Mehboob Hussain Chaudhry of Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) could only muster three votes while The Nisar Ansar – the joint candidate from Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, Jammu and Kashmir Peoples Party and All Jammu and Kashmir Muslim Conference, got six votes.

One vote from the PML-N was rejected.

The council consists of 12 members, six of which are elected by the AJK Legislative Assembly, while the other six are nominated by the prime minister of Pakistan from parliament.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 2^nd, 2016.