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he Azad Jammu and Kashmir prime minister is about to be replaced. The Muslim League-Nawaz has formally announced its support for the Pakistan Peoples Party to topple the incumbent government in Muzaffarabad, which is led by Prime Minister Chaudhry Anwar-ul Haq.
A party or coalition needs the support of at least 27 members of the Legislative Assembly to install its nominee as prime minister. According to the latest figures, the PPP has 17 seats, the PML-N 9, the PTI has 4, the PTI Forward Bloc (Barrister Sultan Group) 7, the PTI Anwar Group has 8, the Refugee Group 4, the Muslim Conference, JKPP and Ulama-o-Mashaikh Group a seat each. The PPP is all set to form the government. PML-N leaders have said they are prepared to support the PPP in the formation of the government, but will not be join the cabinet.
Prime Minister Anwar-ul Haq’s coalition had been an uneasy alliance between the PPP, PML-N, and breakaway members of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf. It has seen a slow unraveling since early October. The rifts widened when both PPP and PML-N leaders accused Haq of damaging the coalition politically by lending tacit support to the recent protest movement led by the Joint Awami Action Committee.
The movement forced the AJK government to concede several key demands, including cuts in elite privileges and a reduction in the size of the cabinet. Under JACC’s pressure, the government also agreed to cease refugee members’ share of the development budget.
This led to the resignation of several refugee members from the cabinet. Several LA members then joined the PPP and the PML-N. On October 26, ten legislators elected on PTI tickets, including some members close to AJK President Barrister Sultan Mahmood, defected to the PPP, making it the single largest party with 27 seats.
The ten lawmakers currently at the centre of this shift, have a record of opportunistic alignments that define AJK’s power politics. Some of them already been in the PPP, the PML-N and the PTI, depending on whichever side seemed ascendant in Islamabad. Their latest move from the PTI back to the PPP, after earlier defections in 2021, highlights the trend: loyalty in AJK’s politics often bends with the federal winds. This has steadily eroded public trust, reinforcing the view that governance in the region remains secondary to patronage.
With Monday’s announcement, the arithmetic in Muzaffarabad’s assembly is clear: the PPP commands enough support to form the next government. Party sources say consultations have begun to nominate a new leader of the House. The decision will be finalised in coordination with top leaders in Islamabad.
On October 26, 10 legislators elected on PTI tickets, including members close to Barrister Sultan Mahmood, defected to the PPP, making it the single largest party with 27 seats.
“We have the numbers and the momentum,” a senior PPP legislator told The News on Sunday. “This transition will bring stability and allow us to focus on the issues of governance that have been ignored.” Despite the mounting pressure, Prime Minister Anwar-ul Haq has remained defiant. “If they have the numbers, they can bring a no-confidence motion. We will face it,” his aide Chaudhry Azhar Sadiq said on Monday. But with both federal and regional PPP leaders pushing for a swift transition—and the PML-N’s formal withdrawal of support—Haq’s days in office appear numbered.
The looming transition is not an isolated event. It is part of a recurring pattern in Azad Jammu and Kashmir’s turbulent politics. Since the 2021 general elections, the region has had three prime ministers. In 2022, Sardar Abdul Qayyum Niazi was forced to resign after losing support within his own Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf ranks. His successor, Sardar Tanveer Ilyas, made history a year later as the first AJK prime minister to be disqualified for contempt of court, following repeated confrontations with the judiciary and the federal government. PTI’s internal fragmentation paved the way for Chaudhry Anwar-ul Haq, once a PTI loyalist, to form a coalition government with support from the PPP and PML-N in April 2023.
If Haq now falls to a no-confidence vote, the AJK will get its fourth premier from the same Legislative Assembly. The extraordinary turnover reveals not just the volatility of AJK’s parliamentary politics but also its structural weaknesses. Each transition has carried echoes of the last, alliances built on expediency, not ideology, collapsing under the weight of competing interests and federal interference.
Political commentators say the crisis underscores both internal and external limitations of AJK’s political system. Shams Rehman, author and political commentator, told The News on Sunday: “The AJK’s political system seriously lacks stability. Since federal institutions control most of the matters there is little room for it to grow and mature despite regular elections and high literacy.” He added that AJK’s politics remained “dominated by tribal and clan loyalties.” The recent people’s rights movements, he said, has posed a direct challenge to this entrenched order. The ongoing transition once again showed how decisions about AJK’s leadership were shaped in Islamabad.
The unfolding crisis once again highlights a central paradox in AJK’s politics: despite having a semi-autonomous parliamentary system, stability often depends on shifting signals from Islamabad. Governments in Muzaffarabad rarely fall solely because of governance failures; they mostly collapse when the political tide changes in Islamabad. As national parties extend their rivalries across the Line of Control, AJK’s assembly becomes an extension of Pakistan’s partisan chessboard rather than a forum for regional self-governance.
This persistent instability has real costs. Frequent leadership changes paralyze policy continuity, discourage bureaucratic accountability and stall development priorities in a region already grappling with fragile infrastructure and limited fiscal autonomy. The result is a governance cycle more reactive than reformist, one that survives on political rearrangements rather than delivering on promises to the people.
As another government prepares to take office, AJK stands not at the beginning of a new chapter but at the midpoint of a repeating story where the same political figures keep revolving around the same centres of power.
The writer is a freelance contributor from Azad Jammu and Kashmir,currently pursuing an MS in developmentstudies at NUST,Islamabad.She can be reached athunainmehmud101gmail.com and onX: hunain_mahmood