Imran Khan on hot wire after minister quits and BAP joins opposition

While the political play is on in Islamabad, it is ultimately the Pakistan Army which will decide whether Imran Khan stays or gets the boot.

Published on: Mar 28, 2022, 21:09:20 IST

By Shishir Gupta

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A cabinet member of Imran Khan's government has resigned, hours after a no-confidence motion was tabled in the Pakistan National Assembly. Tariq Basheer Cheema, the federal minister for housing, is a PML-Q member from Bahawalpur. The lawmaker has announced his decision to vote for the opposition's no-confidence motion.

Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan and Leader of Opposition Shehbaz Sharif,

Earlier in the day, the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) announced PML-Q leader Chaudhary Pervaiz Elahi as the Punjab chief ministerial candidate, leading to the resignation of incumbent CM Usman Buzdar who had faced a no-confidence motion. According to Pakistan media reports, Imran Khan's special assistant on political communication claimed that the PML-Q had assured support to back the government.

With one member defecting to the opposition, PML-Q has now four members which according to the PTI will support the government. In the 342-member Pakistan National Assembly, the opposition parties including PML-N, Pakistan People's Party enjoy support of 163 members. With the Balochistan Awami Party declaring support to the opposition, the strength goes up to 168, just four votes less than the required numbers to unseat the Imran Khan government.

Now, all eyes are on the Muttahida Qaumi Movement which has seven members in the Assembly. In case it votes for the opposition, Imran Khan's government will be defeated.

With the no-confidence motion already tabled, the voting must take place after third day and before the seventh day. According to the constitution of Pakistan, the prime minister can't dissolve the house and order fresh elections.

Imran Khan has reiterated several times that he won't resign and will continue to fight till the last ball. During a rally at Islamabad's Parade Ground on Sunday, the 69-year-old politician alleged a foreign conspiracy behind efforts to topple his government.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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