New PM of Pakistan

66-year-old Imran Ahmad Khan Niazi is a Pakistani politician and former cricketer who is the current chairman of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, who is most likely to be sworn in as the 19th Prime Minister of Pakistan.

None of the previous Pakistan PM’s completed a full term of five years. The first, Liaquat Ali Khan, had the longest tenure of 4 years and 2 months. Nawaz Sharif has served for 9 years and 4 months over three terms (1990-1993, 1997-1999, 2013-2017).

Imran Khan was a member of the National Assembly of Pakistan from 2013 to 2018, a seat he won in 2013 general elections. Prior to entering politics, Khan was a cricketer and philanthropist. He played international cricket for two decades and later developed philanthropy projects such as Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital & Research Centre and Namal College.

Khan was born to a Pashtun family in Lahore, Punjab, and educated at Aitchison, Worcester, and later at Keble College, Oxford. Khan started playing cricket at the age of 13. Initially playing for his college and later for the Worcestershire Cricket Club, he made his debut for Pakistan at the age of 18 during the 1971 English series at Birmingham. After graduating from Oxford, Khan joined Pakistan’s national cricket team in 1976, and played until 1992. Khan also served as the team’s captain intermittently throughout 1982–1992. He, notably, led Pakistan to victory at the 1992 Cricket World Cup, Pakistan’s first and only victory in that competition.

Khan retired from cricket in 1992 as one of Pakistan’s most successful players. He made 3,807 runs and took 362 wickets in Test cricket, and is one of eight world cricketers to have achieved an ‘All-rounder’s Triple’ in Test matchess. He was later, in 2010, inducted into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame.

In 1991, he launched a fundraising campaign to set up a cancer hospital in memory of his mother. He raised $25 million to set up the first hospital in Lahore in 1994, and later in 2015 a second hospital in Peshawar. Khan remains a prominent philanthropist and commenter, and served as the chancellor of Bradford University between 2005 and 2014 and was the recipient of an honorary fellowship by the Royal College of Physicians in 2012.

In April 1996, Khan founded the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, a centrist political party, and became the party’s national leader. Khan contested for a seat in the National Assembly in October 2002 and served as an opposition member from Mianwali until 2007. He was again elected to the parliament in the 2013 elections, when his party emerged as the second largest in the country by popular vote. Khan serves as the parliamentary leader of the party and leads the third largest block of parliamentarians in the National Assembly since 2013. His party also leads a coalition government in north-western province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Khan owns a 300 kanal mansion cum farmhouse in Bani Gala, Islamabad worth $7.1 million. He has a house in Zaman Park, Lahore worth $270,000. Khan has also been an investor, investing more than $380,000 in various businesses. He owns furniture of $5,700) and four goats of $1,900. However he has no vehicle registered in his name.

He had numerous relationships during his bachelors life. He was then known as hedonistic bachelor and a playboy who was active on the London nightclub circuit.

He was in a relationship with late heiress Sita White, daughter of late British industrialist Gordon White. They remained in the relationship for about six years, having met in 1987-88. According to Sita White, Khan agreed for a child in the 1991 meeting. Tyrane Jade was born on 15 June 1992, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre but Khan refused to accept her because she was a girl. Later, in 1997, Los Angeles court announced the verdict which was put by his former partner Sita White and her lawyer Gloria Allred that Imran Khan is father of a five year old girl named Tyrian-Jade White.

Khan also had an affair with Bollywood actress Zeenat Aman and wanted to marry her, but did not do so as the marriage was opposed by the then all-powerful Pakistani President, General Zia ul Haq. Khan had also been in a relationship with Emma Sergeant for four years. The beautiful lady was an award-winning artist. There were also reports of Imran having an affair with Late Pakistan PM Benazir Bhutto.

On May 16, 1995, at the age of 43, Khan married 21-year-old Jemima Goldsmith, in a two-minute ceremony conducted in Urdu in Paris. A month later, on 21 June, they were married again in a civil ceremony at the Richmond registry office in England. Jemima converted to Islam. The couple have two sons, Sulaiman Isa and Kasim. Rumours circulated that the couple’s marriage was in crisis. Goldsmith denied the rumours by publishing an advertisement in Pakistani newspapers. On June 22, 2004, it was announced that the couple had divorced, ending the nine-year marriage because it was “difficult for Jemima to adapt to life in Pakistan”.

In January 2015, it was announced that Khan, then 63-years-old,  married 41-year old British-Pakistani journalist Reham Khan in a private Nikah ceremony at his residence in Islamabad. However, Reham Khan later states in her autobiography that they in fact got married in October 2014 but the announcement only came in January the year after. On 22 October of the same year, after just none months (or a year?) of marriage, they announced their intention to file for divorce.

In mid-2016, late 2017 and early 2018, reports emerged that Khan had married his spiritual advisor Bushra Manika. Khan and members of the Manika family denied the rumour. Khan termed the media “unethical” for spreading the rumour, and PTI filed a complaint against the news channels that had aired it. On January 7, 2018, however, the PTI central secretariat issued a statement that said Khan had proposed to Manika, but she had not yet accepted his proposal. On February 18, 2018, PTI confirmed Khan has married Manika.

On August 1, 2017, Ayesha Gulalai came forward with allegations of harassment against Khan and claimed that she had been receiving offensive messages from him since October 2013.

Imran Khan has authored six books