By Staff Reporter
MUZAFFARABAD: Lawmakers in Azad Kashmir on Friday submitted a no-confidence resolution against Prime Minister Chaudhry Anwarul Haq, setting the stage for a vote on Monday that opposition leaders say will install a new government led by the Pakistan Peoples Party.
The resolution, signed by 25 members of the 52-seat Legislative Assembly, was delivered by hand to Amjed Latif Abbasi, the assembly’s special secretary, after the regular secretary, a relative of Haq, did not report to work. Nineteen of the 25 signatories are serving cabinet ministers in Haq’s government and have not resigned their posts.
The document explicitly names Faisal Mumtaz Rathore, a senior PPP figure and current minister for local government and rural development, as the opposition’s choice to succeed Haq. The space for the nominee’s name had been left blank while signatures were collected. Rathore’s name was written in by hand before the resolution was filed.
“We, the undersigned members of the Legislative Assembly, in accordance with Article 18(4) of the Interim Constitution, hereby submit a no-confidence motion, holding that the current Prime Minister [Chaudhry] Anwarul Haq has not only lost the trust of the Legislative Assembly but has also inflicted serious damage upon the constitutional, ideological, and democratic framework of the state, through his style of governance, political narrative, and confrontational conduct,” the resolution states. “We, the proposers, recognise Faisal Mumtaz Rathore as the nominee for prime minister and call for the earliest completion of the electoral process in accordance with constitutional and democratic requirements, so that the continuity of government formation remains intact.”
Speaker Chaudhry Latif Akbar, who is widely seen as aligned with the opposition, promptly summoned the assembly to meet at 3 pm on Monday to take up the motion. A simple majority, 27 votes in the 52-member house, is required for the resolution to pass. The move follows weeks of negotiations between the PPP and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N). On Oct. 27, PPP leader Qamar Zaman Kaira publicly announced that the two parties had reached an agreement on bringing a no-confidence motion against Haq’s government, which came to power in 2023 after a group of lawmakers defected from the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party of former Prime Minister Imran Khan.
Earlier Friday, outside Zardari House in Islamabad, PPP leaders formally introduced Rathore as their candidate. Chaudhry Muhammad Yasin, president of the party’s Azad Kashmir chapter, told reporters alongside Raja Pervez Ashraf, a former prime minister of Pakistan and senior PPP figure that the “chairman has decided … that Faisal Rathore, who is the general secretary of our party in AJK, will be nominated for the position of PM.” “We are going to table the vote of no confidence today,” Yasin continued, “so God willing, in the next few days, PPP will have its government in AJK.”
Ashraf described Rathore as “an educated young man” with “a lot of experience” who had previously served in the assembly. He added that the party remained “committed to the people of Kashmir” and wanted to “ease their hardships and pave the way for the next elections.” Both men expressed confidence that the opposition commanded more than the required votes. “We have the required number,” Yasin said. “I feel that we have the golden number.”
Ashraf called the PPP “the largest parliamentary party” in the assembly and said it enjoyed the support of allies sufficient to form a government. When reporters asked Malik Zafar Iqbal, one of the PPP lawmakers who delivered the resolution, why cabinet ministers who signed the motion had not tendered resignations, he replied: “Our decisions are taken by our central leadership, and as yet no such directive has been issued.”
Rathore, 46, comes from one of Azad Kashmir’s most prominent PPP families. His father, the late Raja Mumtaz Hussain Rathore, served as prime minister, speaker, senior minister and leader of the opposition at different points. His mother, Begum Farhat Rathore, was a lawmaker and headed the party’s women’s wing in the territory. Rathore was first elected to the assembly in 2011 on a PPP ticket and held cabinet portfolios under a previous PPP-led government. He rejoined the assembly in 2021 and, after the 2023 political realignment that brought Haq to power, accepted a ministerial position in the coalition cabinet while continuing to serve as the party’s general secretary in Azad Kashmir.
Colleagues describe him as soft-spoken and conciliatory, qualities that helped him lead the government’s negotiation team last year with the Jammu Kashmir Joint Awami Action Committee, a protest movement that had paralysed parts of the territory over electricity prices and other grievances. Opposition leaders on Friday framed the impending change of government as a step toward political stability and the fulfilment of promises made to that protest committee. If the no-confidence vote succeeds on Monday, Rathore would become the first PPP politician to lead Azad Kashmir since 2016. The territory, which Pakistan administers but whose final status remains disputed with India, has seen frequent changes of government in recent years amid shifting alliances and interventions from Islamabad.
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