Ishaq Dar to take oath as finance minister today

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Senator Ishaq Dar will take oath as finance minister today (Wednesday) after Miftah Ismail formally resigned from the post of finance minister on Tuesday, ARY News reported citing sources.

President Arif Alvi will administer the oath to Ishaq Dar at a ceremony to be organised at Aiwan-e-Sadar.

Earlier in the day, Chairman Senate Sadiq Sanjrani administered oath to former finance minister Ishaq Dar as senator amid protest from opposition members.

Opposition members vehemently protested and surrounded the dais of the chairman senate as Ishaq Dar sworn in as a member of the upper house. Opposition senators left their seats and reached in front of the dais while carrying protest banners in hands and chanted slogans.

PML-N’s leader of the house, Azam Nazeer Tarar, while welcoming Ishaq Dar as a member of the Senate also said that protest is a democratic right.

Ishaq Dar, a PML-N stalwart and close confidante of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, returned to Pakistan on Monday after ending his five years self-exile.

Talking to reporters at the Nur Khan Airbase in Chaklala, on Tuesday Dar said that PML-N supremo Nawaz Sharif and the prime minister has entrusted him the responsibility of the finance ministry.

“I will try my best to fulfill all the responsibilities. We will try to take out the country from the economic maelstrom it is stuck in […] the way we did in 1998 and 2013.”