From Family Tragedy to PaJK Presidency

MUZAFFARABAD: Thirty-five years after a family tragedy abruptly pulled him away from medicine and into politics, Dr Muhammad Najeeb Naqi Khan was on Thursday elected the 25th President of Pakistan-administered Jammu and Kashmir.

Naqi, the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz candidate, secured 32 votes in the Legislative Assembly, defeating Pakistan Peoples’ Party candidate and veteran politician Chaudhry Latif Akbar, who received 13. Forty-five members took part in the ballot, while one remained absent.

The PML-N has 31 lawmakers in the House, excluding Speaker Chaudhry Tariq Farooq. Naqi received all 31 PML-N votes as well as the vote of the lone member of the Awami Dast-o-Baazu party.

His election fills a presidency that has been vacant since Barrister Sultan Mahmood Chaudhry’s death in January. Latif Akbar, then Speaker of the Assembly, initially served as acting President. After Tariq Farooq was elected Speaker on August 25, he assumed the acting presidency.

But Naqi's elevation is notable for another reason. Unlike most presidents elected by an Assembly, he is not himself a member of the present legislature.

Elections have still not been held in seven constituencies of Poonch Division, including the two constituencies in Sudhnoti, his home district. Polling there was postponed in August because of the security situation during prolonged protests and unrest. Six weeks later, the Election Commission has yet to announce a fresh polling date. Chief Election Commissioner Justice (retd) Ghulam Mustafa Mughal said this week that security remained the determining factor in deciding when voting could take place.

Naqi's election to the presidency therefore comes before voters in his own political stronghold have had an opportunity to elect their representatives to the new Assembly.

Born in Rawalpindi on January 19, 1964, Naqi spent much of his early life away from electoral politics. He studied at Aitchison College in Lahore before graduating in medicine from King Edward Medical College in 1988.

His career changed abruptly two years later.

His father, retired Colonel Muhammad Naqi Khan, died in a road accident while campaigning during the 1990 election period. Until then, the younger Naqi had been pursuing medicine rather than preparing to inherit the family's political mantle. His father's sudden death pushed him into active politics.

Within a year, he was elected to the Legislative Assembly for the first time in 1991.

That election began a political career spanning three and a half decades. From 1991 to 1996, Naqi served as a member of the Assembly and Parliamentary Secretary for Health and Planning and Development. He was re-elected for the 1996-2001 term and served on the Public Accounts Committee.

Between 2001 and 2006, he moved to the Azad Jammu and Kashmir Council, the institution linking the regional administration with Pakistan's federal government.

He returned to the Legislative Assembly in 2006 and held ministerial responsibilities covering health, population welfare, higher education and information technology. He was again elected in 2011 and remained in the Assembly until 2016.

In the 2016 election, Naqi won from his Sudhnoti constituency with 25,732 votes. During the subsequent PML-N government, he held some of its most important economic and social-sector portfolios, including health, finance and planning and development.

His uninterrupted electoral run ended in 2021, when he lost from his home constituency for the first time.

He was preparing to return to the electoral contest this year, but voting in Poonch and Sudhnoti became a casualty of the unrest that accompanied the 2026 elections. The Election Commission postponed polling in five constituencies of Poonch district and two in Sudhnoti on law-and-order grounds.

Instead, his next political destination turned out to be the presidency.

Political Inheritance From 'Baba-e-Poonch'

Naqi belongs to one of Poonch and Sudhnoti's oldest political families, whose public life predates the division of Jammu and Kashmir in 1947.

His grandfather, Colonel Khan Muhammad Khan, widely remembered as "Baba-e-Poonch", entered representative politics when the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir established the Praja Sabha in the 1930s.

He was elected to the Praja Sabha in 1934 and remained associated with it until the 1940s. He was also a prominent advocate of education in the impoverished Poonch region.

In 1934, Khan Muhammad Khan founded the Sudhan Educational Conference. One of his best-known initiatives was the "Muthi Bhar Aata", or handful-of-flour, scheme. Families contributed small quantities of flour, which were collected and sold to raise money for education and the establishment of institutions in the region.

The initiative became part of Poonch's social history at a time when formal education remained beyond the reach of many rural families.

Khan Muhammad Khan also played a role in bringing a younger generation into politics. Accounts of his political life record that he vacated his Praja Sabha seat in favour of Barrister Sardar Muhammad Ibrahim Khan, who would later become the first President of the Pakistan-administered part of Jammu and Kashmir.

Naqi's father continued the family's political tradition after serving in the Pakistan Army. Colonel Muhammad Naqi Khan subsequently became a member of the regional legislature and served as Minister for Health and Food as well as an adviser to the Prime Minister.

Politics also runs through Naqi's family by marriage. He is related by marriage to the family of veteran Pakistani politician Ghulam Dastgir Khan. Former Pakistan federal minister Khurram Dastgir Khan is his brother-in-law.

Chosen From Outside

Naqi's road to the presidency opened on September 16 when PML-N president and former Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif chose him as the party's candidate.

Punjab minister Marriyum Aurangzeb announced the decision on X, saying Sharif had nominated Naqi and directed him to file his papers. The choice effectively settled the contest because the PML-N had already established a commanding majority in the new Assembly.

Naqi subsequently filed his nomination papers before Chief Election Commissioner Justice Ghulam Mustafa Mughal in Muzaffarabad, accompanied by Prime Minister Iftikhar Gilani, former prime minister Raja Farooq Haider Khan, PML-N regional president Shah Ghulam Qadir and other party leaders.

The PPP fielded Latif Akbar, a senior politician who had himself served as acting President following Sultan Mahmood's death.

Thursday's result largely reflected the numerical strength of the two parties in the Assembly. Naqi polled 32 votes against Akbar's 13.

The election also completes the installation of the principal constitutional office-holders after the turbulent 2026 elections, following the election of Barrister Syed Iftikhar Ali Gillani as Prime Minister and Tariq Farooq as Speaker.

For Naqi, however, the vote closes a much longer circle.

He entered politics not as part of a carefully planned career but after an accident took his father's life during an election campaign in 1990. A year later, he entered the Assembly.

Thirty-five years on, the physician who inherited an unfinished political campaign from his father has reached the presidency, becoming the third generation of a Poonch family whose involvement in the region's politics began before the partition of the former princely state.