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41 of the 49 seats in the Azad Kashmir Legislative Assembly 25 seats needed for a majority | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Map of Azad Kashmir showing Assembly Constituencies and winning parties | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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General elections were held in Azad Kashmir on 11 July 2006 to elect the members of eighth assembly of Azad Kashmir. Sardar Attique Ahmed Khan and Raja Zulqarnain Khan were elected as Prime Minister and President of Azad Kashmir, respectively. [1]
The All Jammu and Kashmir Muslim Conference (AJKMC) won twenty general seats, the Pakistan People's Party seven, the People's Muslim League (PML) four the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) two, and the Jammu Kashmir Peoples Party (JKPP) one. Six independents also won seats, although three of them joined the AJKMC after the election. LA-33 Jammu and Others-IV had its election postponed by four days, which saw another AJKMC victory. Following the elections, the AJKMC managed to win four seats reserved for women and one reserved seat each for ulema, technocrats, and overseas. On the other hand, the PPP only won one reserved seat for women. [2] [3] [4]
Therefore, the AJKMC managed to have thirty-one members in the Assembly, the PPP eight, the PML four, independents three, the MQM two, and the JKPP one. [5]
The AJKMC formed the next government in Azad Kashmir, easily electing its leader, Attique Ahmed Khan, as the next Prime Minister. Khan had received 35 votes and defeated Sahibzada Muhammad Ishaq Zaffar of the PPP, who received only eight votes. The AJKMC was also able to elect Shah Ghulam Qadir and Sardar Farooq Tahir as Speaker and Deputy Speaker of the Assembly, respectively. [6] [7]
Candidates from the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front and other pro-independence groups were not allowed to run; local law prohibits persons expressing views counter to "the ideology of Pakistan, the ideology of the State’s accession to Pakistan or the sovereignty, integrity of Pakistan" from running for office. Opposition groups saw the vote as rigged in favour of the Pakistani federal government. [8] [2]
The Pakistan Muslim League (N) (PML(N) or PML-N; Urdu: پاکستان مسلم لیگ (ن)) is a centre-right, conservative liberal political party in Pakistan. It is currently the third-largest party in the Senate and the largest in the National Assembly. The party was founded in 1993, when a number of prominent conservative politicians in the country joined hands after the dissolution of Islamic Democratic Alliance, under the leadership of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. The party's platform is generally conservative, which involves supporting free markets, deregulation, lower taxes and private ownership. Although the party historically supported social conservatism, in recent years, the party's political ideology and platform has become more liberal on social and cultural issues; however, members have been accused of using Islamist populist rhetoric. Alongside the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and Pakistan People's Party (PPP), it is one of the three major political parties of the country.
Since its establishment in 1947, Pakistan has had a non-symmetric federal government and is a federal parliamentary democratic republic. At the national level, the people of Pakistan elect a bicameral legislature, the Parliament of Pakistan. The parliament consists of a lower house called the National Assembly, which is elected directly via first-past-the-post voting, and an upper house called the Senate, whose members are chosen by elected provincial legislators. The head of government, the Prime Minister, is elected by the majority members of the National Assembly and the head of state, the President, is elected by the Electoral College, which consists of both houses of Parliament together with the four provincial assemblies. In addition to the national parliament and the provincial assemblies, Pakistan also has more than five thousand elected local governments.
Attique Ahmed Khan is a Pakistani-Kashmiri politician who had served as the President of the All Jammu and Kashmir Muslim Conference political party since 2002. He was elected twice as the Prime Minister of Azad Jammu and Kashmir from 24 July 2006 to 6 January 2009, and for a second term from 29 July 2010 to 26 July 2011. He served as the Leader of the opposition from 15 January 2009 to 22 October 2009, and has been elected five times as a Member of the Legislative Assembly. He also had worked in the Supreme Council of the Muslim World League.
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