PROFILE: From business affairs to state affairs

In the last week of February 2021, Sardar Tanveer Ilyas made his first public appearance in the political arena of Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) at a rally in Rawalakot where he vowed among other things to snowball the popularity of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) to help it singlehandedly form the next government in the territory. And over the next one and a half years, he literally moved heaven and earth to translate his avowal by bringing many electables in the party’s folds at the strength of his personal relations and resources. When the party clinched victory, neither he nor any of the other probables were considered by PTI chairman Imran Khan for the coveted position of the AJK premier. Instead, Khan chose a minnow to the surprise rather shock of the entire parliamentary party which somehow resigned itself to his decision. Only 14 months after his first political engagement in AJK and nine months after the general elections, Lady Luck eventually smiled on Ilyas and he took the oath as 14th prime minister of the liberated territory on April 18 (Monday). 

Ilyas was born in 1974 to Sardar Ilyas Khan, the eldest of the seven sons of Sardar Muhammad Sharif of Bungoin village of Poonch district. His grandfather, a well-off landholder of his area, had also returned as a Basic Democracy member in the early sixties. Ilyas’ father went to Saudi Arabia at a young age to try his luck there and eventually rose from an ordinary position to the president of al-Tamimi group – a conglomerate of companies doing businesses in around nine sectors with over 25000 employees, almost 40 percent of them from Pakistan and AJK. Those who know Khan, who was awarded with Sitara-e-Pakistan in 2019 for his feats, say sedulousness, incorruptibility, loyalty and business wisdom helped him climb to the highest of positions in the business community. His personality traits have passed on to his three sons - Ilyas being the eldest one – which is why they set up their Sardar Group of Companies in Pakistan which has built among other things the wonderful shopping mall in the heart of Islamabad by the name of Centaurus. 

Huge business ventures notwithstanding, the family never severed its connection with politics. Sardar Saghir Chughtai, one of the paternal uncles of Tanveer Ilyas, became the AJK Council member in 2011 for five years. In 2016, Mr Chughtai contested Legislative Assembly elections from their native constituency on the ticket of Muslim Conference and became the MLA. Shortly before 2021 polls, Mr Chughtai who had also joined PTI at the persuasion of his nephew died in a tragic road accident in the territorial limits of Rawalpindi. Such was his popularity in the constituency that people returned his widow Shahida Saghir in the 2021 elections.  Ilyas grabbed electoral victory from the neighbouring Bagh district. Having earned business administration, law and journalism degrees before and during the management of family’s businesses, he was friends with prominent personalities of different walks of life, such as politicians, civil and military bureaucracy and media. In 2009, PML-Q leadership with whom he enjoyed a close personal relationship had got him nominated for a Senate seat even though he was not a member of their party. But he did not take part in the election due to the political uncertainty in the country. Ahead of the 2018 elections, he was appointed as a caretaker minister in the provincial Punjab government. He joined the PTI soon after the 2018 election and was made chairman Punjab Board of Investment and Trade in January 2019. Impressed by his entrepreneurial skills, Imran Khan asked the then Punjab chief minister Usman Buzdar to appoint Ilyas as his special assistant for investment related affairs. However, Khan wanted to test his abilities in AJK where the PTI had bagged just 2 seats in 2016 elections to the AJK Assembly. 2021 was the election year in AJK and while the PTI was gearing up to forcefully contest the polls, Khan tasked Ilyas to manipulate his strong tribal and personal connections in the territory to help the party “vanquish its political rivals” there. Sardar Murtaza, a confidant of Ilyas, asserts that his enthusiastic involvement in election campaign turned out a boon for the party, as he spared no effort to boost the morale of the activists and candidates across the territory as well as in the constituencies of Pakistan based Kashmiri refugees. "Resultantly the PTI emerged as a single largest party in the Assembly." Now when Ilyas is in the driving seat in AJK, Yasir Arif, an Islamabad based analyst, believes that he will exercise his expertise to bring a paradigm shift in this territory blessed with huge potential for skyrocketing progress but "devoid of visionary leadership." “The way he has raised his business empire in a short time, he surely will also raise the economic profile of AJK before long,” he claims. 

On Monday, when Ilyas was delivering his victory speech in the Assembly, in the Visitors’ Gallery were seated four generations of his family – his grandfather, parents, spouse and children - all with beaming faces. The dream had come true ahead of time, but together with the daunting challenge of ‘skilful management of state affairs’ from the successful management of business affairs. 

 

Tariq Naqash