Key Takeaways
- Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) Prime Minister Iftikhar Gillani appointed a 8-member cabinet.
- The cabinet includes seven directly elected and one indirectly elected lawmakers.
- Former minister and senior parliamentarian Noreen Arif was not inducted into the cabinet.
Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) Prime Minister Iftikhar Gillani has constituted a relatively small cabinet, appointing seven directly elected and one indirectly elected lawmakers as ministers without portfolios. The newly appointed ministers took the oath at a ceremony held at the Presidency, with acting President Chaudhry Tariq Farooq administering the oath in the presence of Prime Minister Gillani.
The newly inducted ministers include 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, is a prominent Birmingham-based businessman and 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, 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. 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 ministers, a figure that was not exceeded by the newly constituted cabinet.
