Tight security enforced; only lawmakers and authorised staff permitted inside Assembly premises
MUZAFFARABAD: The Azad Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly will vote today (Monday) on a no-confidence motion filed against Prime Minister Chaudhry Anwar-ul-Haq.
Speaker Chaudhry Latif Akbar will chair the special session, during which the motion—submitted jointly by the Pakistan Peoples Party (Azad Kashmir) and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz—will be formally taken up.
Authorities have placed stringent security measures around the Assembly Secretariat, Ministers Block, and the Prime Minister’s Secretariat. Entry has been restricted to assembly members and official Secretariat employees. Journalists will only be granted access with authorised passes, and all lawmakers are expected to enter the chamber together.
In the 2021 AJK general elections, the PTI secured 26 of the 45 general seats and, together with six reserved seats, formed a government with a total strength of 32 in the 53-member Assembly.
However, on August 3, 2023, the High Court cancelled the registrations of PML-N, PPP, and PTI with the AJK Election Commission due to procedural lapses. While PML-N and PPP later regularised their status, PTI has yet to fulfil the required formalities and remains unregistered.
As a result, PTI’s 32 lawmakers are now treated as independents, with 28 of them switching allegiance to PPP and PML-N. Since they were elected on PTI tickets, they are not subject to the anti–floor-crossing law.
This marks the seventh no-confidence motion in AJK’s political history since 1975.
PTI had originally formed the government after winning the 2021 elections, appointing Sardar Qayyum Niazi as Prime Minister. A no-trust vote ousted him in 2022, leading to Sardar Tanveer Ilyas’s election. His later disqualification for contempt of court triggered internal rifts within PTI. Subsequently, on April 22, 2023, then-Speaker Chaudhry Anwar-ul-Haq was elected Prime Minister with the support of 48 lawmakers.
If today’s no-confidence vote succeeds, the joint PPP candidate Raja Faisal Mumtaz Rathore is expected to become the 16th Prime Minister of Azad Kashmir.
