Raja Pervaiz Ashraf

Raja Pervez Ashraf (born 26 December 1950) is a Pakistani politician who served as the 17th prime minister of Pakistan from June 2012 to March 2013 and as speaker of the National Assembly from April 2022 to March 2024. A senior leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party from the Rawalpindi region, he was minister for water and power in the government of Yousaf Raza Gillani from 2008 to 2011 before being chosen as prime minister when Gillani was disqualified. ^{1 2}

He was born on 26 December 1950 in Sanghar, Sindh, to a Punjabi Muslim family of the Minhas Rajput clan of Pakhral, originally from Gujar Khan in Rawalpindi District; his parents owned agricultural land at Sanghar, where he was brought up. He graduated from the University of Sindh in 1970 and worked in agriculture before entering politics. The English article reports that an uncle of his served as a minister in the cabinet of Ayub Khan during the 1960s. ^{1 3}

He contested parliamentary elections in 1990, 1993 and 1997, and was elected to the National Assembly from Gujar Khan in 2002 and again in 2008, serving on the standing committees on Kashmir and on law, justice and human rights, and as secretary general of the PPP. In March 2008 he became minister for water and power in the coalition government of Prime Minister Gillani. His tenure coincided with a chronic national electricity shortage and frequent load-shedding, for which he was heavily criticised in the Assembly, though the article also notes that about 3,570 megawatts were added to the national grid during the PPP government, a major portion of it during his term, and that he prioritised hydroelectric projects including the Neelum–Jhelum project. ^{1 2}

After the Supreme Court disqualified Prime Minister Gillani on 19 June 2012, and the PPP's first nominee for the succession withdrew after an arrest warrant was issued against him in a narcotics case, Ashraf was elected prime minister on 22 June 2012 by 211 votes to 89. His government faced the Supreme Court's continuing demand that the prime minister write to the Swiss authorities to reopen graft cases against President Asif Ali Zardari, which Ashraf declined to do, taking the same position as his predecessor. He announced small-dam projects and development packages, and his term ended on 16 March 2013 ahead of the general elections. On 16 April 2022 he was elected unopposed as the 22nd speaker of the National Assembly, an office he held until March 2024. ¹

The allegations are recorded here as charges with their state as the article reports it, not as settled guilt. As water and power minister, Ashraf was accused of receiving kickbacks in the rental power projects and of using illegal money to buy property abroad; he denied the charges. On 15 January 2013 the Supreme Court ordered his arrest in the rental power case, and on 16 January 2014 an accountability court in Islamabad indicted him and six others in the case. The English article states that none of the accused in the rental case has been convicted, and that Ashraf has repeatedly demanded clearance of his name and offered his full cooperation to the courts. The article also reports a nepotism criticism: his appointment of his son-in-law to a World Bank post in violation of rules. ¹

Wikidata gives his religion as Sunni Islam, but that is a single structured value. The Arabic article's infobox gives Islam in general, and the English article names no religion or school for him at all — its only related text is that he was born to a Punjabi Muslim family, which is family background, not an attestation of his own affiliation. His faith is therefore recorded as unclassified. ^{3 2 1}

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