Pakistan's Gilgit-Baltistan region gets new chief minister

By Aamir Latif and Islamuddin Sajid

KARACHI / ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AA) – The Legislative Assembly of Pakistan's northern Gilgit-Baltistan region elected the leader of the house on Thursday amid some legislators boycotting the process.

Haji Gulbar Khan, a legislator from a splinter group of former Prime Minister Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, was elected as the new chief minister of Gilgit-Baltistan.

He received 19 votes in a 33-member Legislative Assembly to secure the coveted position, with the backing of the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM), a coalition of over a dozen parties led by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.

Three other candidates, Raja Azam Khan, Javed Ali Manwa, and Raja Zakaria, did not participate in the election and boycotted it.

While Khan's party has a majority in the assembly, his members have split up and lost a key position in the region.

Gulbar Khan was elected after the regional High Court disqualified Khursheed Khalid earlier this month for possessing a forged law degree.

Gulbar Khan was elected as a lawmaker from the Diamir district in the 2020 elections. Previously, he was elected to the legislative body several times from Jamiat Ulema Islam, a mainstream religiopolitical party, since 2009. He joined PTI in 2020.

He served as a minister from 2009 to 2014, and again from 2020 to 2023.

Gilgit-Baltistan, which borders China, was granted autonomous status and the provision of a legislative assembly in 2009. Previously, it was directly governed by Islamabad.

The region is at the confluence of the world’s greatest mountain ranges – the Karakoram, Himalayas, Hindukush, and Pamir.