Pakistan PM Shahid Abbasi expands cabinet, appoints 5 special assistants

To further enlarge his already big cabinet, Pakistan Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi on Tuesday appointed five special assistants. The new assistants include barrister Zafarullah Khan, Mussadiq Malik, Muftah Ismail, Asif Kirmani and Khawaja Zaheer, according to a statement.

The appointments of these five assistants came just days after the Prime Minister appointed Mehtab Abbasi, Amir Muqam, Sartaj Aziz, Jam Mashooq Ali and Irfan Siddiqui as advisers.

Abbasi’s cabinet has grown to 57 members with these new inductions. The cabinet includes ministers, ministers of state, advisors and special assistants.

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It is expected that the cabinet may expand in near future as Shujaat Azeem, Tariq Fatimi, Sharjeel Adnan Sheikh and Haroon Akhtar Khan who were advisors and assistants of Sharif may also be included.

It appears that ahead of the elections which are scheduled to be held in the middle of next year, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz wants to award senior members.

Abbasi, 58, was sworn-in as Pakistan’s 18^th prime minister on August 1 after the Supreme Court disqualified the incumbent Nawaz Sharif for dishonesty following the Panama papers scandal.

He was initially PML-N’s candidate for interim prime minister and Punjab Chief Minister Shehbaz Sharif was to take over after a period of 45 days. However, the decision was reserved later on. Abbasi will be occupying the office till the remaining tenure of PML-N, until mid-2018.

(With PTI inputs)

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