ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan approved the appointment of Senator Ayub Afridi as his advisor on Pakistan nationals living abroad on Tuesday hours after the latter submitted his resignation as a member of the Upper House of Parliament.
The office was held by Zulfi Bukhari before he resigned in May over the allegations levelled against him in the Rawalpindi Ring Road project scandal.
Reports citing sources claim Afridi stepped down to pave the way for the election of Minister for Finance Shaukat Tarin as a senator from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on a general seat.
Tarin was appointed Minister for Finance for a period of six months on April 17. He needed to be elected to the either House of Parliament in order to continue in his post for longer than the six-month period after his appointment.
But that did not happen and, in October, he was, instead, appointed as adviser to the prime minister on finance and revenue.
Tarin until now was the fourth adviser to the prime minister after Mirza Shahzad Akbar, Abdul Razak Dawood and Babar Awan.
The government had earlier planned to get Tarin elected from Punjab against the seat of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader Ishaq Dar that has virtually remained vacant in his absence. Dar was elected in 2018 in absentia has not taken oath because of his self-exile in the United Kingdom since 2017.
The first priority was to get Tarin elected on Dar’s seat, but a second plan was also in place to get a Senate seat vacated from KP for his election because of some legal uncertainties. The government feared that Tarin’s election on Dar’s seat could be challenged in courts and stayed.
A cousin of estranged Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) leader Jahangir Tareen, Tarin also headed the finance division in the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) government, was the fourth finance minister appointed by Prime Minister Khan after Asad Umar, Abdul Hafeez Shaikh and Hammad Azhar had been given the portfolio.
As an adviser to the prime minister, Tarin isn’t able to chair meetings of cabinet committees in view of an Islamabad High Court (IHC) judgement.
