MUZAFFARABAD: The PPP appears poi­sed to elevate its regi­onal sec­retary general, Raja Faisal Mumtaz Rathore, to the coveted office of prime minister in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) by voting out the incumbent, Chaudhry Anwarul Haq, with a sweeping majority in Monday’s Legislative Assembly session.

The resolution for a vote of no confidence against Mr Haq was submitted to the Assembly secretariat on Friday afternoon. Sho­rtly afterwards, Speaker Chaudhry Latif Akbar summoned the Assembly to meet at 3pm on Monday.

While the PPP had already secured the supp­ort of the required 27 law­makers, its chairman Bila­wal Bhutto-Zardari had stressed at a meeting with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif that the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) should not only support the no-trust move to ensure a “thum­ping majority” but also join the next coalition setup.

However, the PML-N leadership announced that it would back the no-confidence motion but would not take any share in a PPP-led government. Cons­equently, the party’s two senior AJK leaders Shah Ghulam Qadir and Raja Farooq Haider signed the resolution along with the 23 PPP legislators.

On the other hand, the five-member PTI, which currently holds the office of Leader of the Opposition, as well as the two single-seat parties — Muslim Conference and Jammu Kashmir Peoples Party (JKPP) — have announced that they will stay away from the process.

On Sunday, two more PTI ‘forward-bloc’ lawmakers — Minister for Elementary Education Deewan Ali Chughtai and Minister for Small Industries Corporation Taqdees Kausar Gillani — announced their decision to join the PPP after meeting Faryal Talpur, raising its own support base to 29.

“We will get the no-confidence motion through with a wide margin,” said Chaudhry Qasim Majeed, a senior PPP figure and cabinet member in the Haq-led coalition government. “The PML-N will also support us in this regard,” he added.

It was, however, yet to be seen whether the movers of the no-trust motion, who have accused Mr Haq of causing “serious damage to the constitutional, ideological and democratic framework of the state through his governance style, political narrative and confrontational conduct”, would defend their position through speeches in Monday’s session.

Ironically, neither had any of the movers stepped down on their own, nor had Mr Haq mustered the courage to remove them in response to their allegations.

Referring to these accusations in an interview with a private TV channel, Mr Haq termed them “childish” and “frivolous”, adding that those who drafted them did not themselves appear to understand what they had written.

“The charge sheet against me leaves one wondering whether the allegations were even understood before being made. If my cabinet colleagues had difficulty writing in Urdu, they could have asked me; I would have drafted the accusations against myself in better words,” he remarked.

Mr Haq claimed he had broken the “status quo” and ensured cabinet involvement in all decisions.

Responding strongly to the allegation of “confrontational conduct” in the no-confidence text, the embattled prime minister asserted that his speeches, videos and public statements over the past two and a half years were on record, and that a disruptive mindset did not — and could not — exist in him. “The person who wrote this phrase should at least know what he was writing,” he said.

Under the AJK Constitution, a vote of no confidence against the sitting prime minister automatically counts as a vote in favour of the lawmaker proposed as his successor in the same resolution. Once the motion succeeds, Mr Rathore will stand elected as the new prime minister, fourth in the sitting assembly since its installation in 2021.

Mr Majeed said the new premier was likely to take the oath of office on Tuesday before President Barrister Sultan Mahmood.

PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari is also expected to attend the swearing-in ceremony, among other dignitaries, he added.

Published in Dawn, November 17th, 2025