MUZAFFARABAD: Khawaja Farooq Ahmed, the parliamentary leader of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) in the Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) Legislative Assembly, has finally been notified as opposition leader, filling the office that had been vacant since June 3.

His appointment was approved by Speaker Chaudhry Latif Akbar under Rule 17 (a) of the Rules of Procedure, 1975, according to a notification issued by the assembly secretary Chaudhry Basharat Hussain on Tuesday.

After the installation of the present assembly in August 2021, Mr Akbar, who is a senior PPP leader, was appointed as Leader of the Opposition on the recommendation of the combined opposition comprising PPP and PML-N.

Interestingly, even after the PPP and PML-N became part of the coalition government on April 20, Mr Akbar did not discontinue occupying this office, something which had also stupefied his party’s chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari when he was invited to speak at a special session of the Assembly on May 3.

Mr Akbar was eventually elected as LA speaker on June 3.

The PTI, it may be recalled, had 32 members in the 53-member house. However, during the formation of the new government in the wake of disqualification of former premier Sardar Tanveer Ilyas, its two thirds majority had deserted the party.

On April 24, four days after the election of Chaudhry Anwarul Haq as new prime minister, PTI chief Imran Khan had convened his parliamentary party’s meeting at his Lahore residence to take some decisions.

However, surprisingly, when a sizable strength, including Mr Ilyas, the then regional party president, did not show up at the meeting, Mr Khan replaced Mr Ilyas by Sardar Abdul Qayyum Niazi and nominated Mr Ahmed as the new parliamentary leader [and subsequently the leader of the opposition] in the assembly, while declaring that his loyalists would sit on opposition benches.

At the moment, only 10 legislators from the PTI and the lone member of the Jammu Kashmir People’s Party (JKPP) have opted to sit on the opposition benches.

Out of the 10 PTI lawmakers, two are visibly inclined towards Mr Ilyas, who is among the launching team of Istehkam-i-Pakistan Party (IPP).

Published in Dawn, July 12th, 2023