Pakistan’s Gilgit-Baltistan region gets new chief minister
KARACHI / ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AA): The Legislative Assembly of Pakistan’s northern Gilgit-Baltistan region elected a new leader of the house on Thursday amid some legislators’ boycott.
Haji Gulbar Khan, a legislator from a splinter group of former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, was elected as the new chief minister of Gilgit-Baltistan.
He received 19 votes in a 33-member Legislative Assembly to secure the coveted position, with the backing of the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM), a coalition of over a dozen parties led by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.
Three other candidates, Raja Azam Khan, Javed Ali Manwa, and Raja Zakaria, boycotted the election.
While Khan’s party has a majority in the assembly, his members have split up.
Gulbar was elected after the regional High Court disqualified Khursheed Khalid earlier this month for possessing a forged law degree.
Gulbar was elected as a lawmaker from the Diamir district in the 2020 elections. Previously, he was elected to the legislative body several times from Jamiat Ulema Islam, a mainstream religiopolitical party, since 2009. He joined PTI in 2020.
He served as a minister from 2009 to 2014, and again from 2020 to 2023.
Gilgit-Baltistan, which borders China, was granted autonomous status and the provision of a legislative assembly in 2009. Previously, it was directly governed by Islamabad.
The region is at the confluence of the world’s greatest mountain ranges – the Karakoram, Himalayas, Hindukush, and Pamir.
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