Syed Amjad Ali Zaidi is a Pakistani politician who had been the Speaker of the Gilgit Baltistan Assembly from November 2020 to June 2023. He has also been a member of the Gilgit Baltistan Assembly since November 2020.

Political career

Zaidi contested the 2020 Gilgit-Baltistan Assembly election on 15 November 2020 from GBA-11 (Kharmang-I) on the ticket of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). He won the election by the margin of 3,945 votes over the runner-up Iqbal Hussain, an independent. He garnered 6,604 votes while Hussain received 2,659 votes.^[1]

He received eighteen votes to be elected as the Speaker of the Gilgit Baltistan Assembly on 25 November 2020, while his opponent, Ghulam Muhammad received only eight votes.^[2]

Even though agreeing to resign from the Speaker's office after two and a half years to allow the Deputy Speaker, Nazir Ahmed, to become Speaker, Zaidi refused to resign. As a result, a no-confidence motion against him was presented by provincial ministers Javed Ali Manwa and Raja Zakaria Khan Maqpoon. Zaidi ceased to be Speaker after the motion succeeded with 21 votes while only a single vote, which was Zaidi's, was cast against the motion. He was succeeded by Nazir Ahmed after the latter was elected unopposed.^[3][4]

References