Daily Times

The new Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) cabinet, on Wednesday, took oath of their offices at a ceremony held at the Governor House.

aThe acting KP Governor, Mushtaq Ahmad Ghani, administered the oath to the new cabinet members while the Chief Minister KP, Mahmood Khan, was also present in the ceremony along with the supporters and relatives of the ministers who took the oath.

According to an official notification issued by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) on Sunday evening, 12 ministers, two advisers and one special assistant were named in the cabinet.

As the notification read, Atif Khan would serve as the senior minister and was given the portfolio of tourism while Shahram Tarakai was given the portfolio of local government. Taimur Saleem Jhagra was given the portfolio of finance and Syed Muhammad Ishtiaq would be the minister for forestry. Haji Qalandar Khan Lodhi would join the cabinet as the minister for food while Shakeel Ahmed Khan would manage the revenue affairs and Mohib Ullah Khan would take charge as the agriculture minister. Amjad Ali would serve as the minister for mineral development while Sultan Muhammad Khan was appointed as the law minister and Hisham Inamullah Khan would serve as the health minister. Kamran Bangash was named as the information technology minister while Akhtar Ayub Khan was also included in the cabinet but he was not assigned any portfolio yet.

Abdul Karim was named as the adviser to the chief minister on industries while Ziaullah Khan Bangash was also named as the adviser to the chief minister.

Shah Muhammad Wazir would serve as the special assistant to the chief minister on transport. Kamran Bangash did not take the oath at the ceremony.

Meanwhile, analysts maintain that the new cabinet is a mix of new and old faces. Shahmim Shahid says that the performance of the new cabinet will depend on how well they deal with the key issues in the province. There is no embezzlement or corruption case against the sitting cabinet picks for the obvious reason that the ruling party was in power in the previous term as well, he says.

Another analyst Haq Nawaz hopes that the new cabinet will strive to implement laws enacted in the previous term for greater accountability and right to information. They stressed that merger of erstwhile Fata region, completion of mega-infrastructure projects and provision of service delivery would be the biggest challenges of the government.

With additional reporting from Rehmat Mehsud

Published in Daily Times, August 30^th 2018.