Haji Gulbar Khan, the leader of a forward bloc within the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), was on Thursday elected the new chief minister of Gilgit-Baltistan, replacing Khalid Khurshid who was disqualified for submitting a fake degree with his nomination papers.
Gulbar received 19 votes from the 20 members present in the 32-member house, including three from the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz); three from the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP); and one from the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (Fazl). One lawmaker, Nawaz Khan Naji, abstained from voting.
According to state-run Radio Pakistan, Khurshid’s handpicked successor, Raja Azam Khan, boycotted the election along with his supporters. Similarly, Javed Ali Manwa, who was leading one of the three forward blocs within the PTI, also boycotted the polls, as did Muhammad Zakria Maqpoon, who was leading another forward bloc.
Addressing the house after his victory, Gulbar thanked the legislators for supporting him and vowed to work for the peace and prosperity of the region. The newly elected chief minister hails from the Diamer district, contesting and winning as a Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam candidate in the first GB elections in 2009. The PPP, which formed a coalition government in the region at the time, appointed him as its health minister.
In the next elections, in 2015, he was defeated by the PMLN’s candidate and did not become a lawmaker. He contested the 2020 elections as a candidate for the PTI and was once again appointed the health minister under then-C.M. Khalid Khurshid.
The PTI has condemned the election in a statement issued to media, describing it as “robbing the public mandate” of Gilgit-Baltistan. The party maintained that democracy and the Constitution had been violated by depriving a party with 22 seats in the house of the right to rule, and vowed to return to power.