In a sign of intensifying political manoeuvring ahead of the next elections in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), Prime Minister Faisal Mumtaz Rathore late on Thursday night removed Minister for Planning and Development Chaudhry Muhammad Rasheed from the cabinet after reports surfaced that he was joining the rival Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N).
The development followed the circulation on social media of a photograph showing Mr Rasheed meeting Federal Minister Rana Sanaullah. Former AJK premier Raja Farooq Haider and Federal Minister Sardar Muhammad Yousaf were also present in the meeting. Earlier, Mr Rasheed had separately met Mr Yousaf along with Mr Haider.
Both Mr Rasheed and Mr Yousaf belong to the Gujjar tribe, an influential factor in AJK’s clan-based electoral politics.
Mr Rasheed was elected from LA-30 Muzaffarabad-IV in the 2021 elections on a Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) ticket, but defected in April 2023 when the party found itself in deep water. Aligning himself in the camp of then AJK president Barrister Sultan Mahmood, he joined the coalition government led by Chaudhry Anwarul Haq. In October last year, he joined the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) along with Mr Mahmood’s group and was subsequently inducted into Mr Rathore’s cabinet.
During the tenure of the current legislative assembly, he remained among the few lawmakers to have served under all four prime ministers.
Blessed with good luck, Mr Rasheed first won a legislative assembly seat in 2006 on the ticket of Barrister Mahmood’s now-defunct Peoples Muslim League. He returned to the assembly in 2011 as a PPP candidate and contested unsuccessfully on the same party’s ticket in 2016 before winning again in 2021 under the PTI banner.
For weeks, political circles in Muzaffarabad had been abuzz with reports that Mr Rasheed was negotiating with the PML-N leadership to secure the party ticket for LA-33 Muzaffarabad-VII — a constituency currently represented by School Education Minister Deevan Ali Chughtai, another former PTI lawmaker who recently joined the PPP.
Interestingly, Mr Chughtai himself had also been engaged in talks with the PML-N leadership.
According to two reliable sources, Mr Chughtai, accompanied by one of his close associates holding a key local government office, met Rana Sanaullah in Islamabad on Wednesday in the presence of PML-N AJK president Shah Ghulam Qadir. During the meeting, he reportedly agreed to quit the PPP and join the PML-N.
One participant in the meeting claimed the discussions were deliberately kept secret and no photographs were taken.
However, Mr Rasheed’s publicised meeting with PML-N leaders a day later appears to have altered the political calculus. According to one of Mr Chughtai’s confidants, the latter was left with little choice but to remain within the PPP fold after Mr Rasheed’s move became public.
Meanwhile, the PML-N parliamentary board met in Lahore on Friday under the chairmanship of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif to interview more than 200 aspirants seeking party tickets for the upcoming AJK elections.
Although Mr Rasheed did not attend the board meeting, he later visited the party’s Model Town secretariat, where he was welcomed by Federal Minister Amir Muqam, who draped a party sash around his shoulders. Mr Yousaf, Mr Haider, and some other little-known workers were also present on the occasion, though no other parliamentary board member from AJK attended the reception.
A PML-N office-bearer, requesting anonymity, said the party had yet to decide its candidate for LA-33 despite Mr Rasheed’s apparent entry into the party.
So far, Mr Haider has also applied for the PML-N ticket from LA-33 in addition to his native constituency, LA-32 Muzaffarabad-VII.
Tariq Naqash
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