ISLAMABAD: Two weeks after shuffling his media team, Prime Minister Imran Khan on Wednesday appointed Dr Shahbaz Gill as his special assistant on “political communication”.

The Cabinet Division promptly issued a notification in this regard.

Mr Gill is the 15th person to have been appointed as special assistant to the prime minister and it is the first federal cabinet in the country’s history to have such a large number of special assistants.

With the inclusion of Dr Gill, who has previously served as the official spokesman for Punjab Chief Minister Usman Buzdar, the cabinet size has increased to 51. There are 27 federal ministers, four ministers of state, 15 special assistants and five advisers in the cabinet, besides 36 parliamentary secretaries who are only responsible to represent the ministers in the National Assembly during its proceedings.

Dr Gill has been regularly defending the government’s policies in television talk shows.

The opposition parties used to call him “a self-proclaimed spokesman for the PM” since he had not been officially notified but was operating from the PM Office.

Last month, the prime minister replaced his special assistant on information Dr Firdous Ashiq Awan with retired Lt Gen Asim Saleem Bajwa and appointed Leader of the House in the Senate Shibli Faraz as federal minister for information and broadcasting — a position that had been lying vacant for almost a year.

Nadeem Afzal Chan is still officiating as official spokesperson for the PM Office. The late Naeemul Haq had also served as the PM’s spokesman. Former managing director of the Pakistan Television Yousuf Baig Mirza resigned as special assistant to the PM on media affairs in November last year, stating that he wanted to return to the media industry.

Published in Dawn, May 14th, 2020