• Pakistan lawmakers elected Shehbaz Sharif as the country’s new Prime Minister following the ouster of Imran Khan, who resigned his national assembly seat – along with most of his party members – ahead of the vote.

• The process of electing the new leader of the house began on April 10 after Khan was removed from office through a no-confidence vote, becoming the first premier in the country’s history to be dismissed after losing the trust of the House.

• Sharif, leader of Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N), was the only candidate after Khan loyalist Shah Mahmood Qureshi, the former foreign minister, withdrew his candidacy and resigned his seat.

• No Pakistani Prime Minister has ever completed a full five-year term in office.

• Shehbaz will now form a new government that can remain in place until elections are due in August 2023.

• Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party had 155 lawmakers in the 342-seat chamber before the mass resignations, and Sharif was elected with 174 votes.

Who is Shehbaz Sharif?

• Shehbaz Sharif is the younger brother of three-time prime minister Nawaz Sharif.

• Nawaz Sharif was dismissed in 2017 and later jailed for 10 years by an accountability court on graft charges after revelations from the Panama Papers, but was released to seek medical treatment abroad.

• Shehbaz Sharif, 70, jointly inherited the family’s steel business as a young man and was first elected to provincial office in 1988.

• After a four-year-long stint as the leader of opposition in the Punjab Assembly, Sharif became the chief minister of the province for the first time in 1997. He became the CM of Punjab again in 2008 and 2013, making him the longest serving chief minister.

• Shehbaz Sharif is also mired in graft proceedings. In 2019, the National Accountability Bureau seized nearly two dozen properties belonging to him and his son Hamza, accusing them of money laundering. He was arrested and detained in September 2020, but released six months later on bail.

• The younger Sharif had emerged as the leader of a united opposition to topple Imran Khan.

• Analysts say Shehbaz, unlike Nawaz, enjoys an amicable relation with Pakistan’s military.

• Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated Shehbaz Sharif on his election as the Pakistani PM and said India desires peace and stability in a region free of terror.

• Shehbaz Sharif raked up the Kashmir issue and the abrogation of Article 370 in his inaugural speech at the National Assembly and said his country would raise the matter at every international forum. He also asserted that though he wanted a good relation with India, it cannot be achieved without resolving the Kashmir issue.

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