By Staff Reporter
BAGH: The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz needs just six more seats to secure a two-thirds majority government in Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Adviser to the Prime Minister on Political Affairs Rana Sanaullah said on Saturday, addressing a rally in Bagh ahead of the third phase of elections in the region.
Sanaullah said the PML-N had already secured 24 seats in the first two rounds of polling and expected to add four more when voters in Bagh and Haveli go to the polls on Monday. A further five seats, he said, would follow once elections are eventually held in the remainder of Poonch division.
The third phase had originally been scheduled across all 11 constituencies of Poonch division — three in Bagh, one in Haveli, five in Poonch and two in Sudhnoti — but the AJK Election Commission has confined Monday’s vote to Bagh and Haveli alone, citing law and order concerns. The commission said it would announce fresh polling dates for Poonch and Sudhnoti once it had reviewed the situation on the ground.
“The PML-N will form a government with a two-thirds majority,” Sanaullah told the rally. “The people of Kashmir have trusted PML-N. They have trusted Mian Nawaz Sharif. They have trusted the development in Punjab.”
He urged those present to turn out and vote on Monday, pledging that a PML-N government would make development its foremost priority once installed.
Pledge to engage protest committee
Sanaullah used the rally to signal that an incoming PML-N administration would open talks with the banned Joint Awami Action Committee, which has spent several weeks staging sit-ins across the region over its demand that 12 seats reserved in the local legislature for refugees from Indian-occupied Kashmir be scrapped.
“When this government will be set up, with a two-thirds majority, they will sit with [JAAC] representatives,” he said. “Their first task will be to resolve this issue.”
He characterised 99 percent of those involved in the protests as “our brothers”, describing them as patriotic Kashmiris and Pakistanis, while suggesting a small remainder were intent on sowing division within the country. He accused India of attempting to drive a wedge between Pakistan and the Kashmiri people after failing to achieve its aims through direct confrontation, and said such efforts were doomed to fail. A future PML-N government, he added, would work with the people of AJK to expose and defeat those elements.
“We will defeat them and we will make Kashmir prosperous,” he said.
Development record and federal backing
Sanaullah argued that major development schemes in AJK had historically only been completed when the PML-N held power both in the region and in Islamabad simultaneously, and called on residents of Bagh to turn out in force on Monday, saying “all of Bagh should be involved in the government.”
He said Nawaz Sharif, the PML-N’s founder, would honour commitments made to the people of AJK by selecting the region’s next prime minister from among the party’s three candidates contesting in Bagh, adding that Sharif had already indicated he intended to sit down with whoever took that office to discuss development priorities.
On federal support for the region, Sanaullah pointed to a Rs23 billion special package for AJK approved by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s government in 2024, alongside a wheat subsidy for residents and the approval of five Danish Schools. He said the party intended to extend the public welfare and development model it has pursued in Punjab to AJK.
PML-N dominant after two phases**
The PML-N has emerged as the clear front-runner following the opening two phases of AJK’s legislative assembly elections, winning 24 seats against 10 for the Pakistan Peoples Party. Sanaullah said he expected the party to sweep all four seats being contested in Monday’s vote.
He also hit back at PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, who has claimed in recent days that a countdown has begun toward the collapse of the PML-N-led government in the Centre. “Those counting down will themselves be straightened out, and so will their count,” Sanaullah said.
Federal Minister for Kashmir Affairs Amir Muqam, also addressing the rally, echoed the prediction that the PML-N would form a two-thirds majority government in AJK.
Separately, the AJK’s chief election commissioner said Saturday that a polling date for Rawalakot could be announced within seven days once the sit-ins affecting the area were resolved, and confirmed that campaigning for the third phase would formally close at midnight.
Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari had struck a starkly different tone a day earlier, telling reporters the PML-N was mistaken to believe it could form the AJK government and warning that “their government in Islamabad is also at risk.” He said the countdown toward the PML-N’s fall in the Centre had begun — one, he claimed, “started by their own people” — and alleged that elements within the party wanted Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to fall out with his coalition allies, while suggesting the real tension lay elsewhere.
Pointing to reported friction within the Sharif family, Bhutto-Zardari said: “The real fight is between Islamabad and Lahore. This is the family’s own problem.”
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