Who is Ishaq Dar? Newly appointed Deputy Prime Minister of Pakistan. world News

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New Delhi: 73-year-old veteran politician and Foreign Minister of Pakistan Ishaq Dar was appointed the Deputy Prime Minister of the country on Sunday. According to a notification issued by the Cabinet Division, the appointment was made by Prime Minister Sharif “with immediate effect and until further orders”.

The announcement comes at a time when both Pak PM Sharif and Dar are in Saudi Arabia to attend the World Economic Forum meeting.

Dar, a member of Shehbaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party, has been finance minister in the last two governments. Serving as the Finance Minister for the fourth and last time in the previous Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) coalition government, he was the party’s go-to person for all economic problems.

Despite being the party’s finance expert for decades, Dar, surprisingly, was appointed as the foreign minister when Shehbaz Sharif formed his cabinet in March.

Dar also has close relations with former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif as his son is the elder Sharif’s son-in-law.

Dar was expected to be appointed chairman of the Senate, the upper house of parliament. However, he lost the race last month when the PML-N struck a deal with the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) led by former foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari to secure its support for the coalition government.

The party agreed to allocate the posts of Chairman and Chairman of the Senate to the PPP, leaving Dar with no option but to accept a different role within the government.

The PML-N and PPP agreed to a power-sharing deal to form a coalition government, even as former Prime Minister Imran Khan-backed Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf-backed independents won the majority of seats in the 266-member National Assembly.

This is not the first time that a Deputy Prime Minister has been appointed. Chaudhry Pervez Ilahi served as the Deputy Prime Minister from 25 June 2012 to 29 June 2013 during the tenure of Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP). His role at that time was mostly symbolic as he was rewarded by the then President Asif Ali Zardari. To support PPP government.