Imran Ahmed Khan Niazi history(عمران احمد خان نیازی کی تاریخ)

 Imran Ahmed Khan Niazi (Urdu: عمران خان , born 5 October 1952) is a Pakistani politician and former cricketer who served as the 22nd prime minister of Pakistan from August 2018 until April 2022. He is the founder and former chairman of the political party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) from 1996 to 2023. He was the captain of the Pakistan national cricket team throughout the 1980s and early 90s.

Born in Lahore, Khan graduated from Keble College, Oxford. He began his international cricket career in a 1971 Test series against England. Khan played until 1992, served as the team's captain intermittently between 1982 and 1992, and won the 1992 Cricket World Cup, Pakistan's only victory in the competition. Considered one of cricket's greatest all-rounders, Khan was later inducted into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame. Founding the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) in 1996, Khan won a seat in the National Assembly in the 2002 general election, serving as an opposition member from Mianwali until 2007. PTI boycotted the 2008 general election and became the second-largest party by popular vote in the 2013 general election. In the 2018 general election, running on a populist platform, PTI became the largest party in the National Assembly, and formed a coalition government with independents with Khan as prime minister.

As prime minister, Khan addressed a balance of payments crisis with bailouts from the IMF. He presided over a shrinking current account deficit, and limited defence spending to curtail the fiscal deficit, leading to some general economic growth. He enacted policies that increased tax collection and investment. His government committed to a renewable energy transition, launched Ehsaas Programme and the Plant for Pakistan initiative, and expanded the protected areas of Pakistan. He presided over the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused economic turmoil and rising inflation in the country, threatening his political position.

In early 2022, in what became known as Lettergate, Khan alleged that the United States encouraged his removal from office. In April, during the ensuing constitutional crisis, Khan became the first Pakistani prime minister to be removed from office through a no-confidence motion. In August, he was charged under anti-terror laws after accusing the police and judiciary of detaining and torturing an aide. In October, Khan was disqualified by the Election Commission of Pakistan from taking office for the current term of the National Assembly of Pakistan, regarding the Toshakhana reference case. In November, he survived an assassination attempt during a political rally in Wazirabad, Punjab.

On 9 May 2023, Khan was arrested on corruption charges at the Islamabad High Court by paramilitary troops who smashed their way into the courthouse. Protests broke out throughout Pakistan, resulting in the arrests of thousands of Khan's supporters along with military installations being ransacked. After his release, he blamed the Chief of Army Staff Asim Munir for his arrest. He was sentenced to a three-year jail term on 5 August 2023 after being found guilty of misusing his premiership to buy and sell gifts in state possession that were received during diplomatic visits abroad.[2][3] On 29 August 2023, a Pakistani appeals court suspended Khan's three-year prison term and granted him bail,[4][5][6] but he remained incarcerated in connection with the Lettergate diplomatic cypher, for which he was accused of leaking state secrets and violating the Official Secrets Act.[7][8] On 30 January 2024, a special court sentenced Khan to 10 years in prison after finding him guilty of those charges.[9][10]

On 9 May 2023, former Pakistani Prime Minister and politician Imran Khan was arrested from inside the High Court in Islamabad by National Accountability Bureau (NAB) on the charges of corruption in connection with the Al-Qadir Trust, which he owns alongside his wife, Bushra Bibi.

why imran khan will arrested

Jan 31 (Reuters) - Pakistan's former Prime Minister Imran Khan and his wife Bushra Khan were each handed a 14-year jail sentence on Wednesday in a case related to illegal selling of state gifts.

The verdict by an anti-graft court came a day after Khan received a 10-year jail sentence for leaking state secrets.

In prison since August, Khan, 71, denies wrongdoing and accuses the military of persecuting him.

Following are details of the main cases among 150 he says have been launched against him since being ousted from power in 2022.

SECRETS CASE

* Khan was convicted on Tuesday with making public a classified cable sent to Islamabad by Pakistan's ambassador in Washington in 2022, in what is commonly known as the Cipher case. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison. He denies the charge and has said the contents appeared in the media from other sources.

* Khan has said the cable was proof of a conspiracy by the military and U.S. government to topple his government in 2022 after he visited Moscow just before Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Washington and Pakistan's military deny that.

GIFTS CASE

* Also known as the Toshakhana or state treasury case, Khan was previously handed a three-year prison sentence in August by another court for selling gifts worth more than 140 million rupees ($501,000) in state possession and received during his 2018-2022 premiership.

* That sentence was later suspended but Khan remained in prison in connection with other cases. On Wednesday, an anti-graft court sentenced Khan and his wife to 14 years in jail in the same case. He has said that he legally purchased the items. Government officials have alleged Khan's aides sold the gifts in Dubai.

* A list of these gifts shared by a former information minister included perfumes, diamond jewellery, dinner sets and seven watches, six of them Rolexes - the most expensive being a "Master Graff limited edition" valued at 85 million rupees ($304,000).

LAND BRIBERY CASE

* Khan was previously arrested for four days in May last year on charges that he and his wife received land as a bribe through the Al-Qadir Trust - a charitable trust set up by Bushra Watto, Khan's third wife, and Khan in 2018 when still in office.

* Pakistani authorities have accused Khan and his wife of receiving the land, worth up to 7 billion rupees ($25 million), from a property developer charged in Britain with money laundering.

* Authorities accused Khan of getting the land in exchange for a favour to the property developer by using 190 million pounds repatriated by Britain in the money laundering probe to pay fines levied by a court against the developer.

* Khan's aides have previously said that the land was donated to the trust for charitable purposes. The real estate developer has also denied any wrongdoing.

ABETTING VIOLENCE

* Khan has been indicted under Pakistan's anti-terrorism law in connection with violence against the military that erupted following his brief arrest related to the Al-Qadir case on May 9.

* A section of Pakistan's 1997 anti-terrorism act prescribes the death penalty as maximum punishment.

* Khan has denied the charges under the anti-terrorism law, saying he was in detention when the violence took place.

($1 = 279.2500 Pakistani rupees)

Compiled by Shivam Patel, Asif Shahzad and Ariba Shahid; Editing by Toby Chopra, Andrew Cawthorne and Raju Gopalakrishnan

Family

Imran Khan was born on 5 October 1952 in Lahore to father Ikramullah Khan Niazi, a civil engineer, and mother Shaukat Khanum. He grew up as the only son in the family, with four sisters. Paternally, Khan belongs to the Niazi Pashtun tribe which has long been settled inMianwali in northwestern Punjab.

Khan was “a favourite with women during his cricketing career”, says the London Evening Standard, and “his tall, dark and handsome image led to him being dubbed cricket’s greatest playboy”.

He finally bowed out from the party scene in 1995, when he married Jemima Goldsmith. He has since remarried twice.

Here is everything you need to know about his three wives.

Jemima Goldsmith

The daughter of business tycoon Sir James Goldsmith and Lady Annabel Vane Tempest Stewart, Goldsmith studied English at Bristol University but quit before she could graduate in order to marry Khan. Goldsmith first met her future husband at a nightclub in London when she was 21 and he was 42.

After marrying, she converted to Islam and they set up home in Pakistan, so that Khan could pursue politics. A budding entrepreneur, Goldsmith launched her own fashion label and developed her own brand of ketchup. The couple had two sons, Sulaiman and Qasim, but in June 2004 it was announced that their marriage was over.

Reham Khan

Khan married former BBC weather presenter Reham Ramzan in 2015, but the couple divorced less than a year later. Now 45, she recently published a tell-all memoir about their marriage that has caused uproar in Pakistan.

Ramzan was born in Libya to Pakistani parents and has three children from a previous marriage. She was a weather girl and presenter on the BBC regional news programme South Today.

Bushra Maneka

Khan had a very different courtship with his third wife, he tells the Daily Mail, and did not see her face until after they were married.

“Bushra Maneka, 39, is a leading scholar and spiritual guide in the mystic Sufi branch of Islam and she will not meet men other than her husband with her face uncovered, nor venture unveiled outside her house, which she rarely leaves,” explains the newspaper.

political carrer

Basing his wider paradigm on the poet-philosopher Muhammad Iqbal and the Iranian writer-sociologist Ali Shariati he came across in his youth,[126] Khan is generally described as a Pakistani nationalist,[127] as well as a populist.[128] Khan's proclaimed political platform and declarations include Islamic values, to which he rededicated himself in the 1990s; liberal economics, with the promise of deregulating the economy and creating a welfare state; decreased bureaucracy and the implementation of anti-corruption laws to create and ensure a clean government; the establishment of an independent judiciary; overhaul of the country's police system; and an anti-militant vision for a democratic Pakistan.[129][101][130][131]

After the result of 2018 Pakistani general election, Khan said he would try to remake Pakistan based on the ideology of Muhammad Ali Jinnah.[132] During his government, Khan addressed a balance of payments crisis with a bailout from the IMF.[133] He presided over a shrinking current account deficit,[134][135] and limited defence spending to curtail the fiscal deficit,[136][137] leading to some general economic growth.[138][139] He enacted policies that increased tax collection in Pakistan,[140][141] as well as investments,[142] and the energy policy of Pakistan under Khan saw his government committed to a renewable energy transition. Khan's government also launched the social safety net and poverty alleviation Ehsaas Programme and the Plant for Pakistan initiative, which expanded the protected areas of Pakistan, and he presided over the COVID-19 pandemic in Pakistan, which caused economic turmoil and rising inflation in the country and threatened Khan's political position.[143]

Khan's failure to revive the economy of Pakistan and the rising inflation rate caused him political problems.[143] Despite his promised anti-corruption campaign, the perception of corruption in Pakistan worsened during his rule.[144] He was accused of political victimisation of opponents and clamping down on freedom of expression and dissent.[145] On 10 April 2022, Khan became the country's first prime minister to be ousted through a no-confidence motion vote in parliament. On 22 August 2022, Khan was charged by the Pakistani police under anti-terror laws after Khan accused the police and judiciary of detaining and torturing his close aide.[146]

Foreign relations

In foreign relations, he dealt with border skirmishes against India, strengthened relations with China and Russia,[147] while relations with the United States cooled. In 2010, Khan said in an interview: "I grew up hating India because I grew up in Lahore and there were massacres of 1947, so much bloodshed and anger. But as I started touring India, I got such love and friendship there that all this disappeared."[148] Khan views the Kashmir issue as a humanitarian issue, as opposed to a territorial dispute between two countries (India and Pakistan). He also proposed secret talks to settle the issue as he thinks the vested interests on both sides will try to subvert them. He ruled out a military solution to the conflict and denied the possibility of a fourth war between India and Pakistan over the disputed mountainous region.[149]

Khan publicly demanded a Pakistani apology towards the Bangladeshi people for the atrocities committed in 1971.[150][151] He called the 1971 operation a "blunder"[152] and likened it to today's treatment of Pashtuns in the war on terror.[151] He repeatedly criticised the war crimes trials in Bangladesh in favour of the convicts.[153] In August 2012, the Pakistani Taliban issued death threats if he went ahead with his march to their tribal stronghold along the Afghan border to protest US drone attacks, because he calls himself a "liberal" – a term they associate with a lack of religious belief.[154] On 1 October 2012, prior to his plan to address a rally in South Waziristan, senior commanders of Pakistani Taliban said after a meeting headed by the Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud that they now offered Khan security assistance for the rally because of Khan's opposition to drone attacks in Pakistan, reversing their previous stance.[155]

His sympathetic position toward the Pakistani Taliban and Afghan Taliban, as well as his criticism of the US-led war on terror, has earned him the moniker "Taliban Khan" in Pakistani politics. He believes in negotiations with Taliban and the pull out of the Pakistan Army from Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). He is against US drone strikes and plans to disengage Pakistan from the US-led war on terror. Khan also opposes almost all military operations, including the Siege of Lal Masjid.[156][157]

In 2014, when Pakistani Taliban announced armed struggle against Isma'ili Muslims, denouncing them as non-Muslims,[158] and the Kalash people, Khan released a statement describing "forced conversions as un-Islamic".[159] He has also condemned the incidents of forced conversion of Hindu girls in Sindh.[160] Following the Taliban takeover of Kabul in 2021, Khan congratulated the Taliban for their victory in the 2001–2021 war, and urged the international community to support their new government.[161][162][163] He also said that his government was negotiating a peace deal with the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) with the help of the Afghan Taliban.[164][165]

On 8 January 2016, Khan visited the embassies of Iran and Saudi Arabia in Islamabad and met their head of commissions to understand their stances about the conflict that engulfed both nations after the execution of Sheikh Nimr by Saudi Arabia. He urged the Government of Pakistan to play a positive role to resolve the matter between both countries.[166] After parliament passed a unanimous resolution keeping Pakistan out of the War in Yemen in April 2015, Khan claimed that his party was responsible for "many critical clauses" of the resolution.[167] In July 2018, the Saudi-based Islamic Development Bank activated its $4.5 billion oil financing facility for Pakistan.[168]

Khan's support for Pakistan's blasphemy laws carried over into relations with the West. In 2021 he called on "Muslim countries to pressure Western governments to make insulting" the Islamic Prophet Muhammad a crime, "likening this measure to laws against Holocaust denial".[169] He urged Muslims to launch a boycott on products of countries that do not punish "insult" to "the honour of the prophet". Blasphemy is a "sensitive subject" in Pakistan—at least 78 people have been murdered in mob violence and targeted attacks related to blasphemy accusations since 1990.[170] French president Emmanuel Macron became a lightening rod after defending a "publication's right to republish caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad", which many Pakistanis consider blasphemous.[170]

Early political career

Initial years

Khan tearing his nomination paper for the National Assembly at a press conference; he boycotted the 2008 elections.

Khan was offered political positions more than a few times during his cricketing career. In 1987, president Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq offered him a political position in Pakistan Muslim League (PML) which he politely declined.[171] Khan was also invited by Nawaz Sharif to join his political party.[171] In 1993, Khan was appointed as the ambassador for tourism in the caretaker government of Moeenuddin Ahmad Qureshi and held the portfolio for three months until the government dissolved.[172] In 1994, Khan joined the Jamiat-e-Pasban, a breakaway faction of Jamaat-e-Islami, of Hamid Gul and Muhammad Ali Durrani.[171] On 25 April 1996, Khan founded a political party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).[18][173] He ran for the seat of National Assembly of Pakistan in 1997 Pakistani general election as a candidate of PTI from two constituencies – NA-53, Mianwali and NA-94, Lahore – but was unsuccessful and lost both the seats to candidates of PML (N).[174]

Khan supported General Pervez Musharraf's military coup in 1999,[175] believing Musharraf would "end corruption, clear out the political mafias".[176] According to Khan, he was Musharraf's choice for prime minister in 2002 but turned down the offer.[177] Khan participated in the October 2002 Pakistani general election that took place across 272 constituencies and was prepared to form a coalition if his party did not get a majority of the vote.[178] He was elected from Mianwali.[179] In the 2002 Pakistani referendum, Khan supported military dictator General Musharraf, while all mainstream democratic parties declared that referendum as unconstitutional.[180] He also served as a part of the Standing Committees on Kashmir and Public Accounts.[181] On 6 May 2005, Khan was mentioned in The New Yorker as being the "most directly responsible" for drawing attention in the Muslim world to the Newsweek story about the alleged desecration of the Qur'an in a US military prison at the Guantلnamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba.[182] In June 2007, Khan faced political opponents in and outside the parliament.[183]

On 2 October 2007, as part of the All Parties Democratic Movement, Khan joined 85 other MPs to resign from Parliament in protest of the presidential election scheduled for 6 October, which general Musharraf was contesting without resigning as army chief.[184] On 3 November 2007, Khan was put under house arrest, after president Musharraf declared a state of emergency in Pakistan. Later Khan escaped and went into hiding.[185] He eventually came out of hiding on 14 November to join a student protest at the University of the Punjab.[186] At the rally, Khan was captured by student activists from the Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba and roughly treated.[187] He was arrested during the protest and was sent to the Dera Ghazi Khan jail in the Punjab province where he spent a few days before being released.[188]

Khan at the conference "Rule of Law: The Case of Pakistan" organised by the Heinrich Bِll Foundation in Berlin

On 30 October 2011, Khan addressed more than 100,000 supporters in Lahore, challenging the policies of the government, calling that new change a "tsunami" against the ruling parties,[189] Another successful public gathering of hundreds of thousands of supporters was held in Karachi on 25 December 2011.[190] Since then Khan became a real threat to the ruling parties and a future political prospect in Pakistan. According to an International Republican Institute's survey, Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf tops the list of popular parties in Pakistan both at the national and provincial level.[191][192]

On 6 October 2012, Khan joined a vehicle caravan of protesters from Islamabad to the village of Kotai in Pakistan's South Waziristan region against US drone missile strikes.[193][194] On 23 March 2013, Khan introduced the Naya Pakistan Resolution (New Pakistan) at the start of his election campaign.[195] On 29 April The Observer termed Khan and his party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf as the main opposition to the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz.[196] Between 2011 and 2013, Khan and Nawaz Sharif began to engage each other in a bitter feud. The rivalry between the two leaders grew in late 2011 when Khan addressed his largest crowd at Minar-e-Pakistan in Lahore.[197] From 26 April 2013, in the run up to the elections, both the PML-N and the PTI started to criticise each other.[198]

2013 elections campaign

Khan with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry after the 2013 elections

On 21 April 2013, Khan launched his final public relations campaign for the 2013 Pakistani general election from Lahore, where he addressed thousands of supporters at the Mall.[199] Khan announced that he would pull Pakistan out of the US-led war on terror and bring peace to the Pashtun tribal belt.[200] He addressed different public meetings in various cities of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and other parts of country, where he announced that PTI will introduce a uniform education system in which the children of rich and poor would have equal opportunities.[201] Khan ended his south Punjab campaign by addressing rallies in various Seraiki belt cities.[202]

Khan ended the campaign by addressing a rally of supporters in Islamabad via a video link while lying on a bed at a hospital in Lahore.[203] The last survey before the elections by The Herald showed 24.98 percent of voters nationally planned to vote for his party, just a whisker behind former prime minister Nawaz Sharif's PML-N.[204][205] On 7 May, just four days before the elections, Khan was rushed to Shaukat Khanum hospital in Lahore after he tumbled from a forklift at the edge of a stage and fell headfirst to the ground.[206][207] The 2013 Pakistani general election was held on 11 May throughout the country. The elections resulted in a clear majority of Pakistan Muslim League (N).[208][209] Khan's PTI emerged as the second-largest party by popular vote nationally, including in Karachi.[210][211] Khan's party PTI won 30 directly elected parliamentary seats and became the third-largest party in National Assembly behind Pakistan People's Party, which was second.[212]

In opposition

See also: 2014 Azadi march, Pervez Khattak administration, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Investment Roadshow, and Panama Papers case

Khan led Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf became the opposition party in Punjab and Sindh. Khan became the parliamentary leader of his party.[213][214] On 31 July 2013, Khan was issued a contempt of court notice for allegedly criticising the superior judiciary,[215] and his use of the word shameful for the judiciary. The notice was discharged after Khan submitted before the Supreme Court that he criticised the lower judiciary for their actions during the May 2013 general election while those judicial officers were working as returning officers.[216] Khan's party swooped the militancy-hit northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and formed the provincial government.[217][218] PTI-led Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government presented a balanced, tax-free budget for the fiscal year 2013–14.[219] During his provincial government, Khan was criticised for his support for Sami-ul-Haq, the "Father of the Taliban," and giving funds to his seminary, Darul Uloom Haqqania.[220]

Khan believed that terrorist activities by the Pakistani Taliban could be stopped through dialogue with them and even offered them to open an office in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. He accused the United States of sabotaging peace efforts with the Pakistani Taliban by killing its leader Hakimullah Mehsud in a drone strike in 2013. He demanded the government to block NATO supply line in retaliation for the killing of the TTP leader.[221] On 13 November 2013, Khan, being party leader, ordered Pervez Khattak to dismiss ministers of Qaumi Watan Party (QWP) who were allegedly involved in corruption. Bakht Baidar and Ibrar Hussan Kamoli of Qaumi Watan Party, ministers for Manpower and Industry and Forest and Environment, respectively, were dismissed.[222] Khan ordered Chief Minister Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to end the alliance with QWP. The Chief Minister also dismissed Minister for Communication and Works of PTI Yousuf Ayub Khan due to a fake degree.[223]

Voice of America reports on Khan-led protests in late 2014

A year after elections, on 11 May 2014, Khan alleged that 2013 general elections were rigged in favour of the ruling PML (N).[224] On 14 August 2014, Imran Khan led a rally of supporters from Lahore to Islamabad, demanding Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's resignation and investigation into alleged electoral fraud.[225] On its way to the capital Khan's convoy was attacked by stones from PML (N) supporters in Gujranwala; however, there were no fatalities.[226] Khan was reported to be attacked with guns which forced him to travel in a bullet-proof vehicle.[227] On 15 August, Khan-led protesters entered the capital and a few days later marched into the high-security Red Zone; on 1 September 2014, according to Al Jazeera, protesters attempted to storm Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's official residence, which prompted the outbreak of violence. Three people died and more than 595 people were injured, including 115 police officers.[228] Prior to the violence that resulted in deaths, Khan asked his followers to take law into their own hands.[229]

By September 2014, Khan had entered into a de facto alliance with Canadian-Pakistani cleric Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri; both have aimed to mobilise their supporters for regime change.[230][231] Khan entered into an agreement with the Sharif administration to establish a three-member high-powered judicial commission which would be formed under a presidential ordinance. The commission would make its final report public. If the commission found a country-wide pattern of rigging proved, the prime minister would dissolve the national and provincial assemblies in terms of the articles 58(1) and 112(1) of the Constitution – thereby meaning that the premier would also appoint the caretaker setup in consultation with the leader of the opposition and fresh elections would be held.[232] He also met Syed Mustafa Kamal, when he was in the opposition.[citation needed]

2018 general election

2018 elections campaign

Main article: 2018 Pakistani general election

Khan holding a media press with Arif Alvi during the 2018 electoral campaign

Khan contested the 2018 Pakistani general election from NA-35 (Bannu), NA-53 (Islamabad-II), NA-95 (Mianwali-I), NA-131 (Lahore-IX), and NA-243 (Karachi East-II).[233] According to early, official results, Khan led the poll, although his opposition, mainly PML-N, alleged large-scale vote rigging and administrative malpractices.[234][235][236] On 27 July, election officials declared that Khan's party had won 110 of the 269 seats,[237] giving PTI a plurality in the National Assembly.[238][239][184] At the conclusion of the count on 28 July, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) announced that the PTI had won a total of 116 of the 270 seats contested. Khan became the first person in the history of Pakistan elections who contested and won in all five constituencies, surpassing Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who contested in four but won in three constituencies in 1970.[240][241]

In May 2018, Khan's party announced a 100-day agenda for a possible future government. The agenda included sweeping reforms in almost all areas of government including creation of a new province in Southern Punjab, fast tracking of merger of Federally Administered Tribal Areas into Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, betterment of law and order situation in Karachi, and betterment of relations with Baloch political leaders.[242][243][244]

Post-2018 election reaction

A number of opposition parties have alleged "massive rigging" in Khan's favor amid allegations of military interference in the general elections.[245] Nawaz Sharif and his PML-N party, in particular, claimed that a conspiracy between the judiciary and military had influenced the election in favour of Khan and PTI.[246] The Election Commission rejected allegations of rigging, and Sharif and his PML-N later conceded victory to Khan, despite lingering 'reservations' regarding the result.[247][248] Two days after the 2018 general elections were held, the chief observer of the European Union Election Observation Mission to Pakistan Michael Gahler confirmed that the overall situation of the general election was satisfactory.[249]

Victory speech

During his victory speech, he laid out the policy outlines for his future government. Khan said his inspiration is to build Pakistan as a humanitarian state based on principles of the first Islamic state of Medina. He described that his future government will put the poor and commoners of the country first and all policies will be geared towards elevating the standards of living of the lesser fortunate. He promised an investigation into rigging allegations. He said that he wanted a united Pakistan and would refrain from victimizing his political opponents. Everyone would be equal under the law. He promised a simple and less costly government, devoid of showy pompousness in which the prime minister's house will be converted into an educational institute and governor houses will be used for public benefit.[250] On foreign policy, he praised China and hoped to have better relations with Afghanistan, United States, and India. On Middle East, he said his government will strive to have a balanced relationship with Saudi Arabia and Iran.[250]

Nominations and appointments

On 6 August 2018, PTI officially nominated him as the candidate for prime minister.[251] Delivering a speech during his nomination, he said that he will present himself for public accountability for an hour every week in which he will answer questions put forward by masses.[252] After the election, Khan made some appointments and nominations for national and provincial level public office holders as the head of the winning party. Asad Umar was designated finance minister in the future government of Khan in the center.[253] Khan nominated Imran Ismail for Governor of Sindh,[254] Mahmood Khan as future Chief Minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa,[255] Chaudhry Muhammad Sarwar as Governor of Punjab, Asad Qaiser as Speaker of the National Assembly of Pakistan,[256] and Shah Farman as Governor of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.[257] In Balochistan, his party decided to support Balochistan Awami Party which nominated Jam Kamal Khan for chief minister and former chief minister Abdul Quddus Bizenjo for speaker.[258]

Khan's party nominated Pakistan Muslim League (Q) leader and former Deputy Prime Minister of Pakistan, Pervaiz Elahi for the slot of Speaker of the Punjab Assembly.[259] Abdul Razak Dawood was nominated to be the advisor to prime minister on economic affairs.[260] Qasim Khan Suri was nominated for deputy speaker of national assembly slot.[261] Mushtaq Ahmed Ghani and Mehmood Jan were nominated as speaker and deputy speaker of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa assembly respectively.[262] Dost Muhammad Mazari was nominated as Deputy Speaker for the Provincial Assembly of Punjab. Khan nominated Sardar Usman Buzdar for Chief Minister of Punjab. Announcing the nomination, Khan said that he chose Buzdar because he belongs to the most backward area of Punjab.[263] According to some sources, Buzdar was nominated as a makeshift arrangement because it will be easier to remove a lesser-known individual when Shah Mahmood Qureshi is ready to become chief minister.[264]