MUZAFFARABAD: AJK PM Raja Faisal Mum­taz Rathore on Wednesday inducted 18 ministers into his cabinet and appointed two unelected sons of sitting lawmakers as advisers to the government.

The oath was administered at Aiwan-i-Sadr by AJK Legislative Assembly Speaker Chaudhry Latif Akbar, who is serving as acting president due to the illness of AJK Presi­dent Barrister Sultan Mahmood.

A large number of PPP workers and supporters, as well as several senior civil servants, attended the ceremony, which was also attended by PM Ra­­thore and former prime ministers Sardar Tanveer Ilyas and Haji Yaqoob Khan. However, PPP reg­ional pre­­sident Chaudhry Mu­­hammad Yasin was cons­­picuous by his absence.

The newly inducted ministers were Mian Abdul Waheed, Sardar Javed Ayoub, Syed Bazil Ali Naqvi, Javed Iqbal Budhanvi, Chaudhry Qasim Majeed, Amar Yasin, Sardar Ziaul Qamar, Nabila Ayoub, 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 PPP tickets in 2021, while the remainder had contested the polls on PTI tickets. Except for Mr Nayyar and Mr Soni, the PTI members had defected from their party in April 2023 and joined the PTI’s ‘forward bloc’ led by then-premier Chaudhry Anwarul Haq.

When the political winds began to shift once again in AJK, all of them switched over to the PPP.

While it was the second oath-taking for the PPP’s old guard as cabinet members in the sitting Assembly, seven of their new colleagues took oath for the fourth time and three for the third time.

Although the AJK Constitution does not impose a limit on the size of the cabinet — after the relevant clause was abolished in June 2023 — the government kept the cabinet relatively small in line with its commitment to the Jammu Kashmir Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC), the civil society alliance spearheading a rights movement in the region.

Nabila Ayoub, elected on a reserved seat, was the only woman inducted into the cabinet.

Under another understanding with the JAAC, PM Rathore did not include any MLA elected from the refugee constituencies in the cabinet.

The portfolios of the ministers were not immediately announced. However, shortly after the oath-taking, the prime minister designated PPP lawmaker Waheed as the ‘most senior minister’.

Apart from the ministers, the prime minister also appointed Sardar Ahmad Saghir and Sardar Fahad Yaqoob as advisers to the government.

Mr Saghir is the son of Shahida Saghir, a directly elected MLA from Poonch who has recently joined the PPP, while Mr Yaqoob is the son of Haji Yaqoob Khan.

Published in Dawn, November 20th, 2025