Change in AJK

Even though it happened with consensus, a lot of wheeling and dealing is understood to have come into play as the Azad Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly elected a new Prime Minister to replace Tanvir Ilyas who last week stood disqualified over contempt of court. Since the PTI enjoys a comfortable majority of 31 members in a 52-strong house, it should have been for the party chairman, Imran Khan, to call the shots on the key election. But a split within the PTI ranks in AJK ensured that there is no smooth sailing. No wonder the assembly session to elect the leader of the house was adjourned several times, as neither the government nor the opposition could come up with their nominee for the PM.

Ilyas, the disqualified PTI PM, wanted his man to become the chief executive, while veteran politician Barrister Sultan Mahmood Chaudhry, who had carved out a forward bloc of 12 MLAs from the ruling party, wanted to see one of his close confidants in the PM House. This internal politics within the PTI gave a chance for the opposition combine of the PPP and PML-N, which together had just 19 seats, to jump into the race. A stalemate, however, ensured a dark horse, Anwarul Haq, to rise to the top elected office in AJK.

Haq, a consensus choice of 48 members of the House, was elected unopposed. A PTI member, Haq also formed a forward bloc within his own party and enticed the PPP and PML-N into a power-sharing formula — in what turned out to be a setback for the PTI which had hitherto been ruling the autonomous region single-handedly. The situation was so awful for the PTI that, according to media reports, the dissenters within the party did not even spare time to meet Imran Khan’s emissary Fawad Chaudhry who had rushed to Muzaffarabad with a message to shun the differences and get united. Haq, meanwhile, is a senior politician and a law expert who has twice served as Speaker for of the Azad Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 21^st, 2023.

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