What do emergency and governor rule in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa mean?

Islamabad, Pakistan – Pakistan’s federal government has taken direct control of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the northwestern province until now governed by jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party.

President Asif Ali Zardari signed a proclamation on Sunday, on the advice of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, imposing a state of emergency and declaring that the provincial government could no longer function in accordance with the Constitution, the legal basis for governor’s rule. On Monday, junior interior minister Talal Chaudhry said that the province’s chief minister Sohail Afridi had been placed under detention.

“The fundamental grounds for imposition of emergency are law and order, fight against terrorism, and to save innocent people from the dreadful consequences of terrorist activities,” federal Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar said at a news conference in Islamabad on Sunday, alongside Information Minister Ataullah Tarar, Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi and other officials.

PTI, which has governed the province since 2013, has rejected the move. It came after talks collapsed between the federal government and the party over a planned to Islamabad demanding ex-PM Khan’s release.

Here is what the two measures mean, who now runs the province and how long the arrangement could last.

Who runs Khyber Pakhtunkhwa now?

Under the government’s decision, Governor Faisal Karim Kundi will assume the functions of the provincial government. Kundi belongs to the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), an ally of Sharif’s government.

Parliament — where Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), the PPP and their other allies hold a majority — takes over the powers of the provincial assembly, where PTI has a majority. The chief minister, ministers, advisers, special assistants and advocate general “shall forthwith cease to hold office”, the proclamation says.

Hassan Abdullah Niazi, a Lahore-based lawyer and adjunct faculty member at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), offered a different interpretation.

“However, this does not mean that the KP assembly or its elected Chief Minister have been permanently removed. It is more akin to thinking they are dysfunctional until the emergency is lifted, at which point they must be restored,” he told Al Jazeera.

Kundi will be assisted by an 11-member advisory council.

The army, already deployed in the province, is expected to assist the governor and his team maintain law and order.

A separate federal order has established a secretariat for 12 “designated districts”, most of them in the former tribal areas along the Afghan border.

It will be headed by an additional chief secretary, whose orders will carry the same legal effect as those of the provincial government.

“No province has been divided anywhere. It is only that these are the war-hit districts where more funding and more focus will be needed at this time, and for that this has been set apart,” Naqvi said at Sunday’s news conference.

The order also states that the constitutional provision requiring the judiciary to be separated from the executive “shall not apply” to the designated districts.

“The constitutional provision that mandates the separation of the judiciary from the executive has been suspended, allowing executive officers to perform judicial functions,” Rida Hosain, a Lahore-based constitutional lawyer, told Al Jazeera.

Why did the government invoke both measures?

Article 232 of Pakistan’s Constitution allows the president to declare an emergency when security is threatened by an “internal disturbance beyond the power of a Provincial Government to control”.

Article 234 applies when a governor reports that a province cannot be governed in accordance with the Constitution.

The proclamation cites “terrorist” attacks of “unprecedented level of violent intensity” and says the provincial government “has failed to demonstrate the ownership, will and intent to adequately deal with the menace of terrorism”.

According to the Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies (PICSS), an Islamabad-based independent think-tank, militants carried out at least 1,066 attacks in Pakistan in 2025, up from 908 in 2024.

PICSS recorded 1,232 attacks nationwide in the first nine months of 2026, exceeding the total for all of 2025. The majority occurred in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, in the southwest.

“But this situation was so grave and exceptional that the requirements in both provisions, the conditions that demand them, were such that both provisions were exercised,” Tarar said.

Information Minister Ataullah Tarar went further, accusing the provincial government of links to armed groups.

“This was the carefully considered view, from start to finish, of all cabinet members that the PTI government in KP is hand in glove with the terrorists,” he said, without providing evidence.

Naqvi said the government had dozens of pieces of evidence against the provincial government. None has been made public.

PTI chairman Gohar Ali Khan questioned why the measures applied across the province if the security concerns were concentrated in specific districts.

“If there is terrorism and an emergency is needed in 12 districts, then why is governor’s rule across the whole province?” he said at a news conference in Islamabad after the government’s briefing.

Taimur Jhagra, a PTI leader and former provincial finance minister, rejected the government’s allegations.

“Of course the provincial government was fighting terrorism. We own the fight against terrorism individually and collectively. If the issue was terrorism, then Balochistan should have had a state of emergency before KP,” he told Al Jazeera.

What has happened since Sunday?

PTI says that Sohail Afridi, the chief minister until Sunday, and other party leaders are under arrest.

“We know the CM, the provincial president Junaid Akbar, the Speaker Babar Swati, and some other leaders have been detained. The govt has not revealed where they are,” Jhagra said.

Naqvi had also indicated on Sunday that PTI figures could be detained.

“Definitely, them or whoever else is needed for law and order, to maintain it, we will take into protective custody. But those among them who are wanted will be arrested, and everyone else will be released as soon as law and order improves,” Naqvi said.

Tarar, relaying Naqvi’s position at the same news conference, said some PTI figures had already been taken into preventive custody.

PTI says several provincial ministers and lawmakers were detained even before Sunday.

Internet monitor NetBlocks reported late on Sunday that network data showed a major disruption to connectivity in parts of the province.

District administrations closed schools and colleges in Peshawar, Mardan, Swabi and Nowshera on Monday.

Meanwhile, in Punjab, Imran Khan’s sisters Aleema Khan, Uzma Khan and Noreen Niazi have been held under arrest since September 20-21, under a public order law that allows detention for 30 days.

How long can the measures last?

Provinces have been placed under governor’s rule at least eight times since 1949. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, then known as the North-West Frontier Province, faced it in 1975 and 1994.

Because Zardari acted without a resolution from the provincial assembly, the Constitution requires both houses of Parliament to approve the emergency within 10 days, by October 21.

Sessions of the National Assembly and Senate have been called for Tuesday.

The emergency must also be placed before a joint sitting of Parliament within 30 days. It lapses after two months unless approved by the joint sitting.

Once approved, however, the Constitution sets no fixed end date. The emergency remains in force until it is revoked or a majority of the total membership of both houses votes against it.

Governor’s rule under Article 234 has a separate limit. Parliament can extend it in two-month increments, for a maximum of six months in total.

“The emergency provisions allow the executive to suspend certain fundamental rights, and there is no fixed time limit for how long an emergency can continue allowing for prolonged federal control,” Hosain said.

Gohar said PTI would challenge the measures in the courts and the assemblies.

“We have not formally called off the long march at all. Our struggle, as I told you, will absolutely continue,” he said.