Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) candidate Barrister Iftikhar Gilani has been elected as the 17th Prime Minister of Azad Kashmir after securing 30 votes in the Azad Kashmir Legislative Assembly.
Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) candidate Sardar Mukhtar Khan received 14 votes during the election.
The PML-N currently has 32 members in the assembly, while elections for seven seats have yet to be completed.
Barrister Iftikhar Gilani has previously served as Education Minister in the Azad Kashmir government. He was first elected to the Azad Kashmir Legislative Assembly in 2011.
In the current assembly, he entered the House on a technocrat seat on a PML-N ticket.
His nomination for the top constitutional office had already been endorsed by the PML-N leadership during a key consultation meeting. The meeting was attended by Rana Sanaullah, Khawaja Saad Rafique, Shah Ghulam Qadir and Raja Farooq Haider, among other senior leaders.
The party leadership reached a consensus on Gilani's nomination in the presence of newly elected Speaker Chaudhry Tariq Farooq and Deputy Speaker Ahmed Raza Qadri.
