Barrister Muhammad Khalid Khursheed, the son of a judge, was elected as the third chief minister of Gilgit-Baltistan on November 30 and sworn-in on December 2 to begin a five-year term.

He was the candidate of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI), which won the recent election for the Gilgit-Baltistan Legislative Assembly. He secured 22 votes against the nine obtained by Amjad Hussain, the joint candidate of the opposition parties, in the 33-member assembly.

The PTI had won 10 general seats in the November 15 general election. It later lured six independently elected candidates to its side and won another six reserved seats to raise its strength in the assembly to 22. Independents were the second largest group in the polls as they won more seats than the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), the majority party in the previous assembly, the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F). Of the nine reserved seats, six are for women and three for technocrats and professionals.

The 40-year old chief minister’s father Khursheed Alam was a judge of the chief court of Gilgit-Baltistan. He retired as chief judge of the court. Khalid Khursheed’s uncle Inayat Khan was thrice elected as chairman of the Diamer district council. His family is highly educated, a rare distinction in the remote area. He has three brothers and a sister.

One of his brothers, Atif Khursheed, is a policy expert working at the UNICEF headquarters in New York. Atif’s class fellow, Nawaz Khan belonging to the PTI and hailing from Shangla district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, says they studied together at the Army Burn Hall College in Abbottabad. He says Khalid’s eldest brother, Arif Khursheed, is a doctor. Another brother is Hanif Khursheed, who retired as deputy inspector general of police in Gilgit-Baltistan. Their sister is working in the Planning Department of Gilgit-Baltistan.

The family belongs to Rattu village in Astore district in Diamer division of Gilgit-Baltistan. Khalid Khursheed is the first chief minister from Diamer. As a matter of tradition, the chief ministers are chosen from different divisions of the vast, mostly mountainous region to give representation to all areas. The first one, Syed Mehdi Shah of the PPP had belonged to Skardu in Baltistan division. He lost the election this time. The second chief minister, Hafiz Hafzeer-ur-Rahman of the PML-N, hailed from Kashrote in Gilgit division. He too lost the 2020 polls.

Khalid Khursheed, born on November 17, 1980, did his matriculation from the Public School and College in Gilgit. Like most students from the region, he moved out of Gilgit-Baltistan for further education in major urban centres of Pakistan. In his case, he shifted to Faisalabad for his bachelor’s before moving to London to study for a degree in law from the Queens Mary University.

On his return to Pakistan he entered politics and contested his first election in 2009 as an independent candidate. He lost. He lost again as an independent candidate in the 2015 election.

Khalid Khursheed joined the PTI in 2018, became the party’s president for Diamer division and was third time lucky when he finally won his seat in 2020 by polling 4,836 votes. His first victory in the election also catapulted him into the coveted position of the chief minister. He defeated PPP’s Abdul Hameed, who stood second and secured 3,117 votes, PML-N’s Rana Farman Ali and independent candidate Dr Ghulam Abbas.

Following his election, he has been highlighting the problems of his constituency in Astore, which he has described as the most under-developed in Gilgit-Baltistan. He has mentioned lack of education, healthcare and communication facilities. He has lamented that students give up education due to absence of schools and colleges, patients die as there are few healthcare facilities and snow-bound valleys cannot be reached as there are no approach roads. “Three out of five union councils in my constituency are snow-bound for six months of the year. Imagine the woes of the people when patients have to be shifted to a town or city for treatment due to lack of roads,” he said in a recent interview.

The chief minister highlighted the skiing opportunities in Astore by pointing out that the Pakistan military’s skiing school was in his village, Rattu. He said skiing resorts could be developed there to promote the sport and attract tourists. He also stressed the need for reforestation. In view of the great potential for tourism in Astore, he proposed digging of two tunnels to link the area with Kashmir and Skardu to promote tourism and create jobs and business opportunities.

All of Gilgit-Baltistan has huge tourism potential. The region is already world famous as eight of the 20 tallest mountain peaks are in Gilgit-Baltistan and the friendly nature of its people attracts tourists from far and wide. Summer tourism in Gilgit-Baltistan is already well-known, but the new chief minister says he will try to promote winter tourism as well.

The writer is resident editor of The News in Peshawar. He can be reached at rahimyusufzai@yahoo.com