AJK PM Iftikhar Gillani constitutes 8-member cabinet

MUZAFFARABAD: Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) Prime Minister Iftikhar Gillani on Friday constituted a relatively small cabinet, appointing seven directly elected and one indirectly elected lawmakers as ministers without portfolios.

The newly appointed ministers took oath at a ceremony held at the Presidency, with acting President Chaudhry Tariq Farooq administering the oath in the presence of Prime Minister Gillani.

PML-N’s regional president Shah Ghulam Qadir was also in attendance.

Qadir, who had initially been tipped as the next prime minister, had opposed Gillani’s nomination by the party leadership and had not participated in the election of Gillani as leader of the house or his subsequent swearing-in ceremony on Aug 28.

Those inducted into the cabinet are Raja Saqib Majeed and Dr Mustafa Bashir Abbasi from Muzaffarabad, Sardar Mir Akbar from Bagh, Raja Riasat and Raja Umair Naeem from Kotli, Waqar Noor from Bhimber and Chaudhry Azhar Sadiq from Mirpur.

The eighth cabinet member, Chaudhry Abdul Rehman Arain, hails from Kotli and is a prominent Birmingham-based businessman. He was elected to a reserved seat for Kashmiris living abroad.

Of the eight, Abbasi, Noor, Akbar and Sadiq have previously served as ministers, while the others are new to the cabinet.

Former minister and senior parliamentarian Noreen Arif, who has the distinction of being the only woman to have won a territorial constituency in three direct elections — in 2006, 2016 and 2026 — in addition to serving four other terms on reserved seats, was not inducted into the cabinet.

None of the nine PML-N legislators elected from refugee constituencies in Pakistan was inducted into the cabinet either. The 10th PML-N refugee lawmaker has already been elected deputy speaker of the legislative assembly.

Contrary to speculation on social media, much of it apparently fuelled by aspirants themselves, no one was appointed as an adviser or special assistant to the government.The portfolios of the newly appointed ministers were not announced immediately.

In brief interactions with journalists, the new ministers thanked the prime minister for reposing confidence in them and vowed to discharge their responsibilities to the best of their abilities in the service of the public.

Under the 13th Amendment to the AJK Constitution, enacted in 2018, the then PML-N government introduced a restriction limiting the cabinet to 30pc of the assembly’s total strength, or 16 ministers. Two advisers and two special assistants could be appointed in addition to the ministers.

The restriction did not apply to the PML-N government that introduced it, as it was made applicable from the inception of the next assembly in 2021. The two prime ministers of the subsequent PTI governments, Sardar Abdul Qayyum Niazi and Sardar Tanveer Ilyas, had to abide by the restriction.

The cap was lifted in June 2023, shortly after the installation of the Chaudhry Anwarul Haq-led coalition government, paving the way for the induction of more than 30 lawmakers from the PTI forward bloc, PPP and PML-N as ministers, advisers and special assistants.

The last PPP government, however, had kept the cabinet at 20 members — 18 ministers and two advisers — under an understanding with the now-proscribed Joint Awami Action Committee.

In the direct elections to 38 constituencies, the PML-N has secured 25 seats while the PPP won 12. The lone MLA-elect of the Awami Dast-o-Bazu party also joined hands with the PML-N.