Pakistan-administered Kashmir lawmakers vote for president amid months of unrest

Lawmakers in Pakistan-administered Kashmir are voting on Thursday to elect a president, filling the region's last vacant constitutional office nearly eight months after it fell empty. The vote is taking place in Muzaffarabad at the assembly secretariat between 10am and 1pm local time. It comes despite seven assembly seats remaining vacant in districts at the centre of months of unrest.

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Najeeb Naqi Khan, the candidate backed by the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, is expected to win. The party and its allies hold 32 of the 46 occupied seats in the 53-member Legislative Assembly, which is enough to secure the 27 votes needed under the interim constitution. The Pakistan People's Party has nominated Chaudhry Latif Akbar, a former assembly speaker who served as acting president from January until August.

The presidency became vacant after Sultan Mehmood Chaudhry died in Islamabad on January 31 at the age of 71. He had been elected in 2021 on a Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf ticket. Under the constitution, the speaker is required to arrange an election within 30 days of the office falling vacant, but no vote was held on time.

A petition was later filed in the region's High Court in late February seeking directions to hold the election, naming the speaker, the chief election commissioner and the Election Commission among the respondents. The delayed vote is politically significant because it is unfolding alongside unresolved unrest in two districts that have not yet voted, leaving seven seats unfilled. That means the assembly is choosing a president while part of its membership remains absent, a situation that has sharpened scrutiny of the region's interim constitutional arrangements.

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The outcome is also likely to reinforce the governing bloc's control over the office at a time of continuing tension. Pakistan-administered Kashmir has been operating under a constitutional framework in which the president is elected by a majority of the assembly's total membership, not just the seats currently occupied. That rule makes the 27-vote threshold decisive even with vacancies.

Khan, 62, is a former assembly member from Palandri in Sudhnoti district and has held several ministerial portfolios, while Akbar, 78, is a senior PPP figure with experience in the office. What remains unclear is how quickly the vacant seats will be filled and whether the unrest that left them empty will ease in the coming weeks. The delayed presidential election has already prompted legal and political questions about compliance with the constitution and the role of the assembly leadership.

The result is expected to settle the immediate vacancy, but the wider dispute over representation in the affected districts is still unresolved.

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