Sardar Abdul Qayyum Khan Niazi () is a Kashmiri politician from Azad Jammu and Kashmir who was the 13th Prime Minister of Azad Kashmir from August 2021 to April 2022. He has been a member of the Azad Jammu and Kashmir Legislative assembly since August 2021. He has been the president of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf's Azad Jammu and Kashmir chapter since April 2023.
Personal life
Niazi was born in Darra Sher Khan, a village in the Poonch District of Azad Kashmir, being one of the 8 children of Fazal Dad, a food inspector and councillor from Poonch, and they belong to the Dulli sub-caste of the Mughals, Niazi not being indicative of some Pashtun ancestry but instead a title he chose in the '90s when he was a member of the district council, as his name was regularly confused with that of Sardar Abdul Qayyum Khan, who served as the President and the PM of AJK in the past.
His elder brother, Sardar Ghulam Mustafa, has also been a minister while his younger brother, Sardar Habib Zia, is a lawyer and his son a councilor in the United Kingdom.
Political career
Graduating from the Azad Kashmir University, and beginning his political career in 1982 as district councilor in Poonch, he and his family have been traditionally associated with the All Jammu and Kashmir Muslim Conference (AJKMC) party.
Niazi became a member of the AJK Legislative Assembly on an AJKMC ticket in 2006 and held from 2006 to 2011 different ministerial portfolios in prison, finances and others.
Besides serving in the district council, Niazi remained the minister for food security between 2006 and 2008 in the Muslim Conference government, and the forest minister in the second cabinet of Sardar Ateeq from 2010 to 2011.
Niazi was re-elected to the Legislative Assembly on a ticket of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) in the 2021 elections from LA-18 Poonch-III. After taking oath as a member, he received 33 votes in the Assembly, a majority, to become the 13th Prime Minister of Azad Jammu and Kashmir. On 14 April 2022, Niazi tendered his resignation as Prime Minister after a move by his parliamentary party, the PTI, to replace him with regional president Sardar Tanveer Ilyas through a vote of no-confidence.