MUZAFFARABAD: A day after newly-elected Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) Prime Minister Raja Faisal Mumtaz Rathore’s oath-taking, 18 legislators from the PPP were sworn in as ministers for his cabinet on Wednesday.
The oath to the 18 ministers was administered at Aiwan-i-Sadr in Muzaffarabad by AJK Legislative Assembly Speaker Chaudhry Latif Akbar, who was substituting as the acting president due to the illness of AJK President Barrister Sultan Mahmood. Mahmood reportedly could not travel to the regional capital due to health issues.
PM Rathore, as well as former AJK premiers Sardar Tanveer Ilyas and Haji Yaqoob Khan, were also present on the occasion. A large number of PPP workers and supporters, as well as several senior civil servants, also attended the ceremony.
The newly-appointed ministers are Mian Abdul Waheed, Sardar Javed Ayoub, Javed Iqbal Budhanvi, Chaudhry Qasim Majeed, Amar Yasin, Sardar Ziaul Qamar, Syed Bazil Ali Naqvi, Nabila Ayub Khan, Deevan Ali Chughtai, Malik Zafar Iqbal, Chaudhry Arshad, Chaudhry Muhammad Rasheed, Yasir Sultan, Sardar Muhammad Hussain, Chaudhry Akhlaq, Faheem Akhtar Rabbani, Rafique Nayyar and Ali Shan Soni.
Of them, the first eight were elected on the PPP ticket in 2021. The rest had contested the elections on the PTI ticket and recently joined the PPP.
Nabila Ayub Khan is the only female minister in the cabinet who was elected on a reserved seat. No MLA elected on refugee seats has been inducted in the cabinet.
The portfolios of cabinet members were not immediately announced. A notification issued later in the day said Mian Abdul Waheed was designated as the most senior minister.
At the oath-taking ceremony, a notification of the appointment of two advisers to the government was read by the secretary of services and general administration. Sardar Ahmad Saghir, whose mother Shahida Saghir is a directly elected MLA, and Sardar Fahad Yaqoob, son of Haji Yaqoob, have been appointed as the advisers.
Shahida was also elected on a PTI ticket but deserted the party afterwards and joined the PPP recently.
The AJK Constitution legitimises the appointment of advisers to the government, but it is silent on their oath-taking. Nevertheless, an oath was administered to the two new advisers by PM Rathore.
Rathore was sworn in as the new AJK premier on Tuesday, a day after Chaudhry Anwarul Haq was ousted through a vote of no-confidence. He is the fourth PM elected in AJK in as many years.