LAHORE: Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif met newly elected Azad Jammu and Kashmir Prime Minister Barrister Iftikhar Gilani in Lahore, with the AJK premier crediting Punjab’s ongoing development drive as a template for his own government’s reform push.
According to an official statement issued on Sunday, the chief minister congratulated Barrister Gilani on his election as the Prime Minister of Azad Jammu and Kashmir. The AJK premier, in turn, thanked Ms Maryam Nawaz and the wider leadership of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) for the confidence placed in him.
Prime Minister Gilani used the meeting to reaffirm his resolve to implement the 100-day reform agenda for the development of Azad Jammu and Kashmir — a programme the PML-N leadership has framed as the yardstick against which the new administration in Muzaffarabad will be judged.
The agenda, as outlined in party statements this week, prioritises healthcare, education, sanitation and infrastructure, sectors where service delivery gaps in the territory have long drawn public criticism. In his maiden address after taking office, Mr Gilani had said livelihood opportunities would be his government’s foremost priority, alongside reform in schooling and hospitals.
The AJK premier also paid tribute to Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif for launching landmark projects in Punjab, saying they offered a working example for a smaller administration to follow.
Barrister Iftikhar Gilani said Punjab’s projects were a beacon of guidance for the development of Azad Jammu and Kashmir. “We want to make Azad Kashmir a model of development under the guidance of Quaid Muhammad Nawaz Sharif,” he added.
The remark carries obvious political weight. Punjab’s provincial government has spent the past two years pushing technology-led public service initiatives, transport upgrades and health and education schemes — an agenda the party has increasingly held up as a replicable governance model rather than a purely provincial record.
Barrister Syed Iftikhar Ali Gilani was elected the 17th prime minister of Azad Jammu and Kashmir on Friday, August 28, securing 30 votes in the Legislative Assembly against 14 for Pakistan Peoples Party candidate Sardar Mukhtar Ahmed Abbasi. He had entered the 53-member house on a technocrat seat days earlier, on August 24, when 46 newly elected members took oath following the 2026 general elections that left the PML-N as the dominant parliamentary bloc.
A barrister by training, Mr Gilani first won an assembly seat from Muzaffarabad in 2011 and has previously served as the territory’s education minister. His nomination by PML-N President Nawaz Sharif came as a surprise to sections of the party’s Azad Kashmir chapter, making early signals of unity between Muzaffarabad and Lahore politically significant.
The meeting points to a working relationship in which Punjab’s project experience — and potentially its administrative and technical support — feeds into a territory with a far narrower revenue base and difficult mountain terrain.
The immediate test will be measurable; whether the 100-day agenda produces visible improvement in hospitals, classrooms and roads before the window closes in early December.
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