Consultation underway to rejig cabinet

According to the GNN, PM has decided to change the portfolios of several ministers while new members would also be included in the cabinet.

GNN sources say that several newly elected Senators would also be made part of the cabinet while others would be showed red-flag.  After consultation with close kin, PM’ would change the portfolios of the cabinet members on the basis of performance.

Newly-elected Senators Faisal Vawda and Ali Zafar might become a part of the cabinet, sources claim.

Further, after being re-elected, the notifications of Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Senator Shibli Faraz and Faisal Vawda are yet to be re-issued.

The reshuffle is likely against a backdrop of declining popularity of the ruling party, performance in the by-elections and losing ground to opposition parties and voters expressing their disapproval with the government’s economic policies.

This will be the fifth federal cabinet reshuffle since the PTI government came into power three years ago.

In December 2020, during the last reshuffle, PM Imran Khan changed the portfolios of cabinet members and appointed Sheikh Rasheed as the interior minister.

Moreover, the premier appointed Ijaz Shah as the minister for narcotics control. He was earlier serving as the interior minister. Azam Swati, who had a portfolio of narcotics control, was appointed as the minister for railways. Adviser on Finance Abdul Hafeez Shaikh was made the finance minister after he took oath as a federal minister.

The last time he reshuffled his cards was in December 2020 when he elevated his adviser Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh as the full-fledged finance minister and brought high-profile political ally Sheikh Rashid to the interior ministry’s helm.

Imran had picked Azam Khan Swati, who was serving as the minister for counter-narcotics, to replace Rashid as the railways minister, while Rashid’s predecessor at the interior ministry, Brig (retd) Ijaz Ahmed Shah, was given the narcotics control ministry, vacated by Swati.

Earlier, the premier had carried out a reshuffle of ministers in cabinet positions in April 2020, appointing Makhdoom Khusro Bakhtiar as the federal minister for economic affairs after taking back charge of the minister for national food security from him two days after his name emerged as a major beneficiary in an investigation report into the recent sugar crisis.

In the major cabinet reshuffle, Syed Fakhar Imam was made federal minister for national food security, Hammad Azhar as federal minister for industries and Azam Swati as federal minister for narcotics control.

The prime minister had accepted resignation of MQM-P’s Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui as the federal minister for information technology and telecommunication and MQM-P’s Aminul Haq had replaced him.

Among other changes, Babar Awan was appointed as PM’s adviser for parliamentary affairs. In April 2019, PTI stalwart Asad Umar was sacked.

In the April 2019 cabinet reshuffle after criticism mounted on economic and security policies, the portfolio of information minister was taken away from Fawad Chaudhry, who was named as the federal minister for science and technology.

Back then, Hafeez Sheikh was named the adviser on finance; minister of state for interior Shehryar Afridi was made the minister for states and frontier regions (Safron) and PM had made Brig (retd) Ijaz Ahmed Shah the interior minister.

Ghulam Sarwar Khan, who previously was the petroleum minister, was named the federal minister for aviation.