PTI’s Khalid Khurshid elected G-B CM

GILGIT: Khalid Khurshid of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) was elected as the chief minister of Gilgit-Baltistan with an overwhelming majority in the 33-member legislative assembly on Monday afternoon.

Khurshid secured 22 votes while his opponent Amjad Hussain Advocate got nine votes.

He became the third chief minister of the region after Syed Mehdi Shah of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and Hafiz Hafeezur Rehman of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N).

The voting for the post of chief minister was held in the newly election legislative assembly. Speaker Syed Amjad Zaidi chaired the session. Born on November 17, 1980 in Ratu village of Astor district, Advocate Khalid Khurshid, was elected from GBA 13 Astor-1 constituency in the November 15 election.

He got his early education in Gilgit and then graduated from Faisalabad. Later he got the law degree from London. He contested the election for the first time in 2009, as an independent candidate but lost. He lost again in the 2015 election.

He joined the PTI in 2018 and was elected party president for Diamer Division. Chief Minister Khalid Khurshid comes from an educated family.

His father retired in 2005 as the chief hudge of Gilgit-Baltistan, while his uncle, Haji Inayat, served as chairman of the Diamer-Astor District Council for three consecutive terms from 1981 to 1994. One of his brothers works at the UN and another one is a doctor, currently working in Saudi Arabia. His third brother is the deputy inspected general in the police, currently posted at Gilgit Police Special Branch.