From medicine to politics: Dr Najeeb Naqi’s journey from accidental entrant to AJK president

For Dr Muhammad Najeeb Naqi, politics was never part of the plan.

A student of Aitchison College and later a medical graduate of Lahore’s prestigious King Edward Medical College, he had set his sights on medicine and was doing his house job at Mayo Hospital when fate intervened in the most unexpected way.

A day before the 1990 general elections in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), his father, retired Colonel Muhammad Naqi Khan, then minister for health, died in a tragic road accident while campaigning.

The family elders soon decided that his only son should carry forward the political legacy. At 26, and with little political experience, Dr Naqi was persuaded to take the plunge.

He contested the 1990 election on a Muslim Conference ticket but lost. The setback, however, proved only a temporary detour. The assembly was dissolved within a year, paving the way for fresh elections, in which the young doctor returned to the fray — and this time emerged victorious.

That was the beginning of a parliamentary career that would span more than three decades.

In those days, a first-time legislator was not expected to walk straight into the cabinet. The convention was to start at the bottom and work one’s way up. Dr Naqi did precisely that, serving as parliamentary secretary for health and planning and development from 1991 to 1996.

He won again in 1996, but with the PPP forming the government, he spent the next five years on the opposition benches. He lost the 2001 election but was subsequently elected by assembly members to the AJK Council, where he served until 2006.

Born on Jan 19, 1964, Dr Naqi comes from a prominent political, social and educational family of Poonch whose public-service tradition stretches back several generations.

At the heart of that legacy stands his grandfather, Col Khan Muhammad Khan, popularly remembered as Khan Sahib and Baba-e-Poonch.

A soldier, politician, social reformer and educationist, Khan Muhammad Khan served in the British Indian Army during the First World War and was awarded the Indian Distinguished Service Medal. After retiring as a subedar major, he served as police inspector of Poonch before turning his energies to social welfare and public life.

Education was one of his abiding passions.

In an era when formal education remained beyond the reach of many people, particularly in rural areas of Poonch, Khan Sahib devised the “Muthi Bhar Atta” — or “handful of flour” — scheme. Households contributed a handful of flour every week, which was sold, with the proceeds channelled into educational activities.

In 1934, he founded the Sudhan Educational Conference to encourage both religious and modern education. The same year, he was elected to the Tehsil Bagh and Sudhnoti seat of the Praja Sabha, the first legislature of the erstwhile princely state of Jammu and Kashmir. He retained the seat until 1946, when he voluntarily stepped aside in favour of Sardar Muhammad Ibrahim Khan, who would later become the first AJK president.

The educational initiative also spawned scholarships for talented students and helped establish educational and religious institutions. During the 1947 Kashmir conflict, Khan Sahib served as chairman of the War Council and played a prominent role in the movement that led to the establishment of the territory now administered as AJK.

Dr Naqi was born four years after his grandfather’s death, the youngest of Col Naqi Khan’s four children, with three elder sisters.

His father had followed the family tradition into public life, serving in the army before entering AJK politics. From 1975 to 1977, Col Naqi served as senior adviser to the AJK prime minister. In 1985, he contested and won the election from Sudhnoti and became the minister for health and food in 1988. His death in 1990 unexpectedly pushed his son into the political arena.

Dr Naqi returned to the assembly in 2006 for a third term and served as minister for health and population welfare. He later held the portfolios of education and information technology. He was elected for a fourth term in 2011 on a PML-N ticket and remained on the opposition benches until 2016.

The 2016 election brought him back for a fifth assembly term. He subsequently served as minister for health and also held the finance and planning and development portfolios. Over the years, he thus occupied a range of responsibilities spanning health, education, information technology, finance and development.

After losing the 2021 election, Dr Naqi was set to stage a comeback in the 2026 polls. However, elections in seven constituencies of Poonch division, including his own, were put on hold because of the law and order situation.

Luck had something else in store for him.

As the government formation process was completed on the basis of 46 seats — excluding the seven constituencies of Poonch and Sudhnoti — the top two constitutional offices also went to representatives from other divisions, with the speaker coming from Mirpur and the prime minister from Muzaffarabad.

This led to growing calls for the presidency to go to a representative of Poonch division. Dr Naqi, with his long parliamentary experience and roots in the region, soon emerged as the name around which those calls coalesced.

His nomination came at a time when the presidency had been vacant since the death of Barrister Sultan Mahmood in January. The office was held in an acting capacity first by Legislative Assembly Speaker Chaudhry Latif Akbar and later by his successor, Chaudhry Tariq Farooq. After securing 31 votes against the opposition PPP’s 14, Dr Naqi ascended to the presidency, completing an unlikely journey from medicine to the region’s top constitutional office.

Dr Naqi’s personal life, too, has remained closely intertwined with politics and public service.

He married Ghulam Dastagir Khan’s daughter, linking him to the family of the prominent Gujranwala politician who served several times as an MNA and federal minister.

His brother-in-law, Engr Khurram Dastagir Khan, also served as an MNA and federal minister. His wife, a master’s degree holder in English literature, is a homemaker. The couple has three sons, who were educated in the United Kingdom and are employed in the private sector.

One of his elder sisters founded an elite school in Rawalpindi in 1988 that has since grown into a chain of educational institutions.

Away from politics, however, Dr Naqi is described by friends as a man who keeps pomp and show at arm’s length. He has little taste for protocol and is generally described by those close to him as soft-spoken, approachable and unfailingly courteous.

Even those who have crossed swords with him politically or criticised him publicly have often found him reluctant to respond in kind. Friends say he has generally preferred courtesy, patience and reason to confrontation — and that the smile rarely leaves his face.

That temperament will now accompany him into a constitutional office that demands a different kind of politics from the rough-and-tumble of electoral contests.

His election also has a particular resonance for Poonch, a region that has produced generations of political leaders, soldiers, educationists and social reformers and has contributed considerably to the political and social development of AJK.

For a family whose public life stretches from Khan Sahib’s educational campaigns and role in the 1947 struggle to Col Naqi Khan’s political career, Dr Naqi’s elevation to the presidency marks another turn of the wheel.

And for the doctor who once entered politics almost by accident, after setting out to build a career in medicine, his election as president marks an unlikely culmination — at least for now — of a journey that began with a family tragedy more than three decades ago.