MUZAFFARABAD: After over a year of open hostility, Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) Prime Minister Chaudhry Anwarul Haq and his predecessor Sardar Tanveer Ilyas publicly buried the hatchet on Saturday and agreed to move forward in consensus.

The reconciliation was made public at a meeting held late in the afternoon at the prime minister’s camp office at Jammu Kashmir House in Islamabad. AJK Legislative Assembly member Ali Shan Soni and government adviser Sardar Ahmad Sagheer were also present on the occasion, according to a press release issued by the AJK Press Information Department (PID).

Mr Soni was elected from Bhimber district on a PTI ticket in the July 2021 polls. However, following last year’s political shift in AJK, he aligned himself with Mr Ilyas.

Mr Sagheer, a paternal cousin of Mr Ilyas, is the son of Shahida Sagheer, who was also elected on a PTI ticket. During last year’s political change, she too defected from the party but chose to have her son appointed as an adviser in Mr Haq’s coalition government, rather than accepting a ministerial position for herself.

Interestingly, Mr Haq was originally brought into the PTI fold by Mr Ilyas before the July 2021 elections. After the party’s victory, the two held key positions—Mr. Haq as Speaker and Mr. Ilyas as Senior Minister in the Sardar Abdul Qayyum Niazi-led PTI government. However, Mr Haq was instrumental in replacing Mr Niazi with Mr Ilyas, a goal eventually achieved in April 2022.

Tensions between Mr Haq and Mr Ilyas soon emerged, with Mr Haq deliberately prolonging Legislative Assembly sessions to create difficulties for the then-prime minister. Following Mr. Ilyas’s disqualification in April last year and Mr Haq’s elevation to the office of prime minister, both leaders frequently criticised each other publicly.

While Mr Haq became part of a faction of PTI dissenters, Mr Ilyas joined Jahangir Tareen’s Istehkam-i-Pakistan Party, where he was appointed regional president for AJK.

In a fiery statement in November last year, Mr Ilyas called upon all “stakeholders” to unite in removing Mr Haq from office to “safeguard the interests of the common man and the sanctity of democratic values.”

In December, he blasted the Haq-led government for allegedly stifling dissent through controversial legislation and called for its repeal.

Relations between the two began to thaw three months ago when they held a secret meeting in Islamabad, facilitated by mutual friends. This improvement became publicly evident during a reception hosted for PM Haq in Bagh district by one of Mr Ilyas’s close associates.

Saturday’s meeting, however, was a significant public display of reconciliation, amid speculation about a potential political change in AJK through a vote of no confidence against the sitting premier.

According to the official press release, the two leaders discussed the political situation in AJK and developments in occupied Kashmir.

“Both leaders expressed their commitment to drafting a plan of action through mutual consensus for the Kashmir liberation movement and the development of the liberated part of the state,” the press release read.

This correspondent tried to reach a spokesperson for Mr Ilyas to ascertain his viewpoint on the meeting, but he was unavailable.

Published in Dawn, September 15th, 2024