Who is Shehbaz Sharif, the man who will be Pakistan's new PM?

By Team Newsable | First Published Mar 31, 2022, 5:18 PM IST

With Imran Khan's 'loss of majority' in the National Assembly, opposition leader Shehbaz Sharif, brother of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, is set to be the next Prime Minister of Pakistan.

With Imran Khan's 'loss of majority' in the National Assembly, opposition leader Shehbaz Sharif, brother of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, is set to be the next Prime Minister of Pakistan.

Shehbaz was born on September 23, 1951, in Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan, to a Punjabi-speaking family of the Mian dynasty. His father was an industrialist. The family had relocated from Anantnag in Kashmir for business and later settled in Amritsar's Jati Umra hamlet. His parents moved from Amritsar to Lahore after Partition.

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Since August 2018, Shehbaz Sharif has served as the Leader of the Opposition in Pakistan's National Assembly. He previously served as Punjab's chief minister three times, giving him the province's longest-serving CM.

Sharif was elected to the Punjab provincial legislature in 1988 and to the National Assembly in 1990 as the head of the Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N). In 1997, he was elected Chief Minister of Punjab.

Shehbaz was elected chief minister of Punjab, Pakistan's most populous state, for the first time in 1997. However, the national government was toppled in a military coup in 1999, forcing Shehbaz and his family to spend years in self-exile in Saudi Arabia. He just returned to Pakistan in 2007. He was elected as the Chief Minister of Punjab in 2013 and lasted until the 2018 general elections when his party was defeated.

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After his brother Nawaz Sharif was disqualified from holding office, he was nominated as PML-N president.

As Punjab's chief minister, he was recognised for his enthusiasm for infrastructure development, and he substantially invested in the building of transportation systems, including mega projects like inter-city rapid transit systems, motorways, and rural road development.

Shehbaz was accused in 2003, while still in exile, of instructing the police to assassinate five religious students suspected of involvement in terrorist actions in 1998. He denied the claims, claiming that they were politically driven.

Shehbaz was embroiled in another controversy in December 2019, when the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) confiscated 23 of his properties, charging him and his son, Hamza Sharif, with money laundering. He was detained on suspicion of amassing assets worth Rs 7,328 million in collusion with his co-accused family members.

The Lahore High Court granted him bail in the money-laundering case in April of last year.

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