20 Most Famous Pakistani Politicians

20 Most Famous Pakistani Politicians

*Originally published by Nellian in April 2023 and Updated by Ian. S in March 2024

They have garnered national and international recognition for their contribution to Pakistan’s politics. With their influence, they have made imprints that have shaped the country’s political affairs.

Furthermore, these prominent Pakistani politicians have set trends to be emulated by future political aspirants seeking success in the field. The likes of Nawaz Sharif who is a respected politician cum entrepreneur.

Imran Khan is also noteworthy and celebrated for steering economic growth in Pakistan. Benazir Bhutto set the pace for female politicians. Pervez Musharraf was an illustration of the power of the military and the list goes on. Check them out below.

Here are the 20 Most Famous Pakistani Politicians.

1. Nawaz Sharif

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This Pakistani politician grew up in Punjab and was born in this Pakistani province on 25 December 1949. He is applauded as one of the longest-serving prime ministers of Pakistan.

Moreover, he held the office of the Prime Minister of Pakistan three different times. First from 1990 to 1993, again from 1997 to 1999 and his final term was from 2013 to 2017.

Sharif also served in provincial-level politics as the Minister of Punjab for Finance from 1981 to 1985. From the year 1985 up to 1990, he was Punjab’s, Chief Minister. Other than politics, he is a renowned Pakistani entrepreneur with a focus on steel construction.

Check out the Wealthiest People from Pakistan.

2. Imran Khan

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The Pakistani politician was born on 5 October 1952 in Lahore. He is prominent in Pakistan’s political environment because he served as Prime Minister of Pakistan. Khan led his country in that capacity from 2018 until 2022.

Additionally, the former prime minister steered his country’s economic growth to an upward scale. For instance, he strengthened tax policies which in turn increased tax revenue collection.

To add on, he increased investments in the country and also promoted the transition of Pakistan into renewable energy. He is credited as one of the key founders of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party. He rose to the position of chairperson of the party in April 1996 and serves in the same role to date.

Khan sat in the National Assembly and led the University of Bradford as its Chancellor from 2005 to 2014. Besides politics, he prides himself as the 1992 Cricket World Cup champion.

3. Arif Alvi

Alvi became the 13^th President of Pakistan following the 2018 presidential elections. Thus he assumed presidential office on 9 September 2018. In his leadership as president, he is famed for starting public-private initiatives to boost Pakistan’s Artificial Intelligence. Thus he has invested in education, research, and business opportunities in the same.

He is also praised for encouraging women’s economic empowerment. He has created support mechanisms that ensure Pakistani women access quality and affordable high-tech training. Furthermore, he was pivotal in the formation of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf(PTI) party.

Arif joined Pakistan’s National Assembly in June 2013 and served there until May 2018. Also, from August to September 2018 before he was sworn in as president, he was still part of the National Assembly. He is a dentist by profession and practiced the same before joining politics. He was born in Karachi on 29 July 1949.

4. Benazir Bhutto

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Bhutto is remembered as one of the most successful female Pakistani politicians. She was born in Karachi on 21 June 1953. She was elected as the prime minister of Pakistan two times from 1988 up to 1990 and later in 1993 up to 1996.

What’s more, her political acclaim also stemmed from her position as co-chair of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP). She led the party from the early 1980s until 2007 when she was assassinated. Her demise took place in Rawalpindi when she was 54 years old on 27 December 2007.

5. Asif Ali Zardari

Zardari is a headline Pakistani politician who served as president of Pakistan from 2008 until 2013. He was the husband of the late Benazir Bhutto (above). Upon her death, he was ushered to the leadership of the Pakistan Peoples Party. On top of that, in 2018, he joined the National Assembly of Pakistan where he has served since then. He was born in Karachi on 26 July 1955.

Meet Famous Pakistani people.

6. Muhammad Mian Soomro

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This Pakistani politician cum banker has served in top-ranking positions in both the political and banking industries. He has worked in the Bank of America and served as President of the National Bank of Pakistan. He also served as CEO International Bank of Yemen.

Over and above that, he started his political career with a gubernatorial position. He won the Governor of Sindh seat in the 2000 general election and served in that role up to 2002. Afterward, he sought to be elected as Senator and won. Thus he became the Chairman of the Senate from 2003 until 2009.

Soomro served as Caretaker Prime Minister of Pakistan for a few months from November 2007 to March 2008. From 18 August 2008 up to 9 September 2008, he was in an acting capacity as president of Pakistan. He took over through constitutional mandate upon the resignation of President Pervez Musharraf.

Soomro’s recent public political role was the Minister of Privatisation position. He held this office from October 2018 up to April 2022. He was born on 19 August 1950.

7. Shahbaz Sharif

Sharif is a notable Pakistani politician and the 23rd Prime Minister of Pakistan. He assumed office in April 2022. He has served in both provincial and federal government offices.

Moreover, he has led the Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) twice. From 2009 to 2011 he has held the office since 2018. He also served as the Chief Minister of Punjab on three different occasions. From 1997 to 1999, 2008 to 2013, and from 2013 until 2018.

In 2018, he became the leader of the opposition and was in such capacity until 2022. He was born on 23 September 1951 and credits his growing up in Lahore. He also doubles as a businessman.

8. Pervez Musharraf

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He is acknowledged in Pakistan’s politics because he was the country’s 10^th president. His administration as president ran from 2001 up to 2008. He rose to power through a military conquest that happened in 1999 and it took over the federal government.

Additionally, his other top-ranking public positions were Chief Executive of Pakistan from 1999 to 2002. During this time, he concurrently served as the Minister of Defence.

Musharraf also served in senior public office as the Chief of Army Staff. He was tasked with this responsibility from 1998 to 2007. He has Indian roots and was born there on 11 August 1943. Further, he was raised in Pakistan and Turkey. He died in Dubai on 5 February 2023 aged 79 years.

9. Shireen Mazari

This Pakistani female politician is headlined for her human rights activism. Hence she was the Minister of Human Rights in Pakistan from 2018 to 2022. She was part of the National Assembly of Pakistan from 2013 to 2022.

Furthermore, during her time in parliament, she chaired the Parliamentary Committee on Appointment of the Pakistan Election Commission. She was born in Quetta on 26 April 1956.

Discover the Most Famous Pakistani Women.

10. Maulana Fazlur Rehman

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He is the head of the coalition of parties called the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM). This coalition was responsible for the successful removal of Imran Khan from the prime minister’s office in 2022. Maulana is also at the forefront of the leadership of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (F) political party.

Maulana served in the National Assembly for several terms between 1988 and 2018. He served in various parliamentary committees like the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs. At some point, he was also the opposition head.

He is an outspoken advocate of the Taliban government in Afghanistan and champions its international recognition. He was born in D.I. Khan (Dera Ismail Khan) on 19 June 1953.

11. Bilawal Bhutto

State Department photo by Ron Przysucha – U.S. Department of State from the United States, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari is a Pakistani politician from the prominent Bhutto political family. After his mother Benazir Bhutto, a former Prime Minister, was assassinated in 2007, Bilawal became chairman of the Pakistan People’s Party at a young age.

His father is former President Asif Ali Zardari and his grandfather was former President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Bilawal served as a Member of Pakistan’s National Assembly from 2018 to 2023.

Most recently, he was Minister of Foreign Affairs from April 2022 until August 2023 in the government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.

12. Marvi Memon

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Marvi Memon is a Pakistani politician who has held various government roles. She began her career advising Pakistan’s Board of Investment on marketing profitable sectors.

Memon joined the PML-Q party in 2007 and was elected to the National Assembly in 2008 on a reserved women’s seat from Punjab. She served as a member of the National Assembly from 2008-2011 and again from 2013-2018. From 2015 to 2018, Memon was Chairperson of the Benazir Income Support Programme.

She has been an active force in Pakistani politics over the past decade, serving multiple terms as a member of the National Assembly and holding leadership positions.

13. Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar

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Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar is a Pakistani politician serving as caretaker Prime Minister since August 2023, after Shehbaz Sharif’s government ended. Previously, he was spokesperson for the Balochistan government from 2015-2017.

In 2023, outgoing PM Sharif and opposition leader Imran Khan nominated Kakar as caretaker PM. President Arif Alvi approved this and Kakar took oath on Pakistan’s independence day.

He resigned from the Senate to take the post. In October 2023, Kakar’s government ordered all undocumented immigrants, particularly nearly 1.7 million Afghan nationals, to voluntarily leave Pakistan by November or face deportation.

Despite not being a signatory to the Geneva Convention, Kakar said Pakistan has hosted over 4 million Afghan refugees for 40 years. He called for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war in October 2023, saying the “children holocaust must stop immediately.”

14. Fawad Hussain

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Fawad Ahmed Hussain Chaudhry is a prominent Pakistani politician who has held several key government positions over the past decade. He served as Pakistan’s Federal Minister of Information and Broadcasting from April 2021 to April 2022.

Previously, he was the Federal Minister of Science and Technology from April 2019 to April 2021. Chaudhry was elected to the National Assembly of Pakistan in 2018 as a member of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party. He served on the party’s core committee from 2019 to 2023.

Earlier in his political career, between 2012-2013, Chaudhry worked as a Special Assistant focused on information and political affairs under former Prime Ministers Yousaf Raza Gillani and Raja Pervaiz Ashraf. After over 20 years in politics, in May 2023 Chaudhry announced he was taking a break from public life.

15. Asad Umar

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Asad Umar is a former Pakistani politician who served multiple terms as a member of the National Assembly between 2013 and 2023. He held several high-level government positions as a member of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, including the Federal Minister of Planning and Development from 2019-2022.

Previously, Umar was the Finance Minister from 2018-2019 and chaired the House Finance Committee in 2019. Before entering politics, he had a successful business career as CEO of Engro Corporation from 2004-2012.

Umar served as secretary-general of his party from late 2021 until his resignation in May 2023, following violent attacks on military sites that were allegedly in response to protests over the arrest of party leader Imran Khan.

He stepped down from party leadership positions due to concerns over the unrest. After a long political career, Umar withdrew from public life in 2023.

16. Khawaja Saad Rafique

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Khawaja Saad Rafique is a veteran Pakistani politician who has served in multiple high-level government roles. A member of the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz party, Rafique was elected to the National Assembly several times from 2002 to 2023.

He served as Federal Minister of Railways under Prime Ministers Abbasi and Sharif from 2017 to 2018 and 2013 to 2017, respectively. Rafique also briefly held the Culture and Youth Affairs portfolios under Prime Minister Gillani in 2008. In the 1990s, he was Special Assistant to PM Sharif for Youth Affairs.

Rafique has over 25 years of political experience, including lengthy stints in the cabinet overseeing the railways ministry before retiring from public life in 2023. Throughout his career, he was a key leader in the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz party.

17. Naz Baloch

Naz Baloch is a Pakistani politician and member of the National Assembly. She is a key spokesperson and media face of the Pakistan People’s Party. Baloch comes from the Rind Baloch tribe originally but started her political career with the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party as a young activist in 2011.

Within just 2 years she rose to become Central Vice President and member of the party’s Central Executive Committee. She ran for a National Assembly seat from Karachi in 2013 as a PTI candidate. Baloch played a prominent role in PTI’s 2014 protest demonstrations, managing media coverage.

In 2017 she switched to join the PPP, the party her father was a founding member and minister under Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. Throughout her career, Naz Baloch has been an active and energetic young female voice in Pakistani politics and media.

She leveraged her tribe’s reputation and her dynamism to gain early leadership roles across parties.

18. Ali Muhammad Khan 

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Ali Muhammad Khan is a Pakistani politician who served as Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs from 2018 to 2022. He was first elected to the National Assembly in 2013 as a PTI candidate from Mardan.

Khan was re-elected in 2018, again winning his Mardan constituency. In September 2018 he was appointed to the federal cabinet under Prime Minister Imran Khan. In 2023, Khan was arrested multiple times by authorities for alleged involvement in protests against the government.

He spent 78 days in jail before the Peshawar High Court granted him bail in July 2023. Throughout his political career, Ali Muhammad Khan rose quickly as a PTI leader, serving in the cabinet and winning two terms as MNA before facing legal issues related to opposition protests in 2023.

19. Murad Saeed

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Murad Saeed is a Pakistani politician who served in several federal cabinet positions under Prime Minister Imran Khan from 2018 to 2022. He was first elected to the National Assembly in 2013 as a member of Khan’s PTI party.

Saeed was appointed Minister of State for States and Frontier Regions briefly in September 2018 before becoming Minister of State for Communications and Minister of State for Postal Services.

In December 2018 he was promoted to Federal Minister for both Communications and Postal Services, positions he held until Khan’s government fell in April 2022. Before entering politics, Saeed was a prominent activist and supporter of Imran Khan.

After serving as a cabinet member for over 3 years, Saeed continued as a PTI member of the National Assembly until 2023. Political analysts see him as a potential future party leader due to his close ties and longtime loyalty to Imran Khan.

20. Maryam Nawaz

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Maryam Nawaz Sharif is a prominent Pakistani politician who comes from a famous political family. She is the daughter of Nawaz Sharif, a former Prime Minister of Pakistan.

Although she was initially involved in charitable organizations run by her family, Maryam entered politics herself in 2012 when she took charge of her father’s election campaign. In 2013, she was made Chairperson of the Prime Minister’s Youth Programme, but resigned a year later due to legal challenges.

Maryam won elections to the National Assembly of Pakistan and the Provincial Assembly of Punjab for the first time in 2024, marking the start of her parliamentary career. She gave up her National Assembly seat to serve as Chief Minister of Punjab, becoming the first woman to hold that position.

Through her political activities over the past decade, Maryam has established herself as an influential figure in Pakistani politics. 

The list of the most famous Pakistani politicians is vast hence the above are among the many key politicians who have influenced Pakistan’s political environment over time. The impact of their leadership in various political capacities has shaped Pakistan’s political environment through reforms and policies. Their legacies have crossed national boundaries and live on for generations.