Noor-ud-Doha Farooqui
Prime Minister AJK Sardar Tanveer Ilyas Khan has announced his cabinet. Two ministers Khawaja Farooq Ahmed and Chaudhry Akhlaq were already sworn in. Now they have finalized the names of 14 more ministers. Importantly, he did not include Sardar Muhammad Hussain and Begum Shahida Saghir in his cabinet from Sardar Qayyum Niazi’s cabinet and the three new ministers he has included in the cabinet include Chaudhry Yasir Sultan, Akbar Ibrahim and Chaudhry Maqbool. After the 13th amendment, the number of ministers has been restricted and the first government has been given to the PTI in which first Sardar Qayyum Niazi and now Sardar Tanveer Ilyas is the Prime Minister. He himself had a heavy cabinet during his tenure and applied the new law to the incoming government due to which the government and the members of the assembly are facing difficulties today. The political culture of Azad Kashmir is that the ticket holder of the ruling party, whether he is elected a member of the Assembly or not, has the powers of a minister in the constituency. From appointments in the education department to transfers, police stations, PWD , local government purposes, he has his agents in every office who take money from the people and do their work. Sardar Tanveer illayas has passed this stage amicably but there is no permanent solution to this problem till the restrictions on the number of ministers are removed by amending the constitution. Opposition parties should also think that they have to come to power tomorrow so they should support the government in resolving this issue.
