GB gets 1st woman Deputy Speaker

GILGIT BALTISTAN: Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leader Sadia Danish was on Mon-day elected as Gilgit Baltistan (GB) Deputy Speaker, making her the first woman to touch the milestone.
GB Assembly Speaker Advocate Nazir Ahmad administered her the oath. Her nomina-tion papers were submitted by the coalition parties in the Gilgit Baltistan.
Danish was elected unopposed as no other member of the Assembly filed the nomina-tion papers.
Formerly, she served as GB’s Minister for Information,Tourism, and Sports and Culture.
Earlier, Haji Gulbar Khan, a prominent leader of the PTI forward bloc, was elected as the chief minister of Gilgit-Baltistan on Thursday. This development came after the dis-qualification of his predecessor, Khalid Khurshid, earlier in the month due to a chal-lenge to his degree by PPP MPA Ghulam Shahzad Agha in court.
According to the G-B Assembly Speaker, Nazir Ahmed, Gulbar received an overwhelm-ing majority of 19 out of 20 votes from the members of the region’s legislature.
According to state-run Radio Pakistan, Raja Azam Khan, who had been endorsed by Khurshid as his successor, boycotted the election, as did Javed Ali Manwa, the leader of one of the three blocs within the party. The third candidate, Raja Muhammad Zakaria Khan Maqpoon, also refused to participate in the election. –Agencies