Rehana Dar: Who She Is, Her 2024 Contest Against Khawaja Asif in Sialkot and Her Role in the PTI (2026)

Who is Rehana Dar?

Here is the story in brief. Until the autumn of 2023, almost nobody outside Sialkot had heard of Rehana Dar. She was the mother of a politician, not a politician herself.

Then her son went on television and said he was leaving Imran Khan’s party. Within days she had done something no one expected. She went before the cameras, said she did not accept his decision and announced that she herself would stand for election in his place.

She was a housewife with no experience of politics, facing a sitting federal minister who had held the seat for decades. She became one of the most talked-about candidates in the country.

Rehana Dar did not choose politics as a career. She stepped into it when the men of her family stepped out, and that is why so many people noticed.

The Dar family of Sialkot

She belongs to a business family of Sialkot, the industrial city in the north of Punjab that makes sports goods and surgical instruments for the world. Her husband, Imtiazuddin Dar, is a businessman.

Two of her sons went into politics with the PTI.

Usman Dar

Usman Dar was the family’s public face for a decade.

So the Dars and Khawaja Asif were old rivals long before she entered the story. Twice her son had tried to unseat him. In 2018 he came very close.

October 2023: the break in the family

After the unrest of 9 May 2023, a crackdown fell on the PTI. Usman Dar dropped out of sight for about four months.

On 4 October 2023 he reappeared in a television interview. He announced that he was leaving the party and leaving politics, and he blamed its leadership for the events of 9 May.

It was one of many such announcements that year. Dozens of PTI leaders made similar statements, often after a period in custody or in hiding. The party said they were made under pressure. The government said people were free to walk away from a party that had attacked state institutions.

What made this case different was the reaction at home.

His mother publicly refused to accept it. She said she stood with Imran Khan. She also said that police had raided the family’s house, and she blamed Khawaja Asif for the raid. Then she announced that she would contest the election against him.

The road to the ballot

It was not simple even to get on the ballot.

• On 30 December 2023 the returning officer rejected her nomination papers, along with those of her daughter-in-law. Many PTI candidates across the country had their papers rejected that week.
• The decision was challenged, and she was allowed to stand.
• The PTI had lost its election symbol, the cricket bat, in a court case. So she, like every PTI candidate, stood as an independent with a different symbol.

Her campaign was short and emotional. An elderly woman with no political training was going from street to street, asking for votes in the name of a leader who was in prison. Videos of her speeches spread widely online.

Why the PTI had no symbol

This point confused many voters, so it is worth explaining.

Every party in Pakistan must hold elections for its own office-holders. In December 2023 the Election Commission ruled that the PTI’s internal election had not been held properly and took away its symbol, the cricket bat. A High Court restored it. Then, on 13 January 2024, less than four weeks before polling day, the Supreme Court upheld the Commission.

The result was that the PTI did not appear on any ballot paper. Each of its candidates was given a different symbol as an independent: a kettle, a bottle, a chair, an aubergine and many more. In a country where many voters find their candidate by the picture, this was a severe handicap. Party workers had to teach voters in each constituency which symbol was theirs.

What happens to independents who win?

An independent who wins a seat has three days to join a party. The PTI’s winners could not join their own, since it had no symbol and had won no seats under its name. So they joined a small allied party, hoping to claim a share of reserved seats through it. That decision led to the long court battle known as the reserved seats case.

For her, none of this arose, since she was not declared the winner.

Sialkot

The city she ran in is unlike most of Punjab.

Sialkot is small, rich and proud of it. Its workshops make most of the world’s hand-stitched footballs, along with surgical tools, leather goods and musical instruments. Its exporters are so organised that they built their own international airport with private money.

Voters there are traders and skilled workers, not peasants dependent on a landlord. Elections are fought on reputation, clan networks and party loyalty. For three decades those forces favoured the PML-N. The PTI’s rise in the city after 2013, with the Dar family at its head, was one of the more striking shifts in urban Punjab.

8 February 2024: the contest in NA-71

The seat was NA-71 Sialkot-II, the heart of the city.

Reports give slightly different totals, but all put his lead at about 18,000 to 19,000 votes.

Her challenge

She did not accept the result.

• She said the voters of Sialkot had chosen the PTI and that the tally had been changed at the returning officer’s office.
• She said the result forms from individual polling stations, which her agents had collected, showed her ahead.
• She complained to the Election Commission. For a time the Commission held back the result and asked the returning officer to explain.
• She also went to the Lahore High Court.

The final outcome of her challenge was not found for this article. Khawaja Asif took his seat and became Defence Minister again. He has always said he won fairly.

How is an election result challenged?

By law a tribunal should decide within 180 days. In practice many of the petitions filed after February 2024 moved slowly, and arguments over which judges should sit on the tribunals delayed them further.

A rivalry that spans decades

Her opponent is one of the most durable politicians in Punjab.

The Dar family has now finished second to him three times, with two different candidates. In both 2018 and 2024 the family’s candidate was credited with a hundred thousand votes or more.

After the election

She did not go home. She became a regular presence at PTI protests.

May 2024, Sialkot

On 9 May 2024, the first anniversary of the 2023 unrest, the PTI held rallies. Her son Umar said that police had arrested her and that it had been done on the Defence Minister’s instructions. Police denied it and said she and her daughter-in-law were at home. Geo reported that she had been held briefly. The accounts cannot be fully reconciled.

August 2025, Lahore

In early August 2025 the PTI began a new round of protests for Imran Khan’s release. The party said she had been detained by police in Lahore and shared a video that showed her being pulled towards a police van by officers in riot gear. Dawn and other outlets reported the party’s claim and the video.

The images caused anger well beyond the PTI’s own supporters. Critics of the government said that dragging an elderly woman was indefensible whatever her politics. No official account of the incident was found for this article.

2026

No confirmed report about her from 2026 was found for this article.

Why did she strike such a chord?

There are three reasons.

First, the family drama. A mother publicly disagreeing with her son, and taking his place, is a story anyone can follow. It needed no knowledge of politics.

Second, the symbol. In 2023 the PTI’s supporters watched leader after leader leave the party at press conferences. She did the opposite at the same moment, and at an age when no one would have blamed her for staying quiet.

Third, the opponent. She was running against a minister of the very government her party blamed for its troubles.

There is also an older pattern behind her story. In Pakistan, women have often stepped forward when the men of a political family were jailed or exiled. Nusrat Bhutto led her husband’s party after his arrest in 1977. Kulsoom Nawaz led the campaign for her husband after the coup of 1999. Others did the same in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan. What they share is that the public accepted them at once, as if a wife or mother carried a moral authority that no party official could match.

She was not alone. Across Punjab in 2024, wives, mothers and sisters of jailed or absent PTI men filed papers as candidates. Some were stand-ins. A few, like her, became political figures in their own right.

What supporters and critics say

Supporters see courage. They say an elderly woman with nothing to gain stood up when experienced politicians backed down, and that she has kept turning up at protests despite rough handling. To them she is proof that the party’s strength lies in ordinary people.

Critics see it differently. Opponents say she is a symbol, not a politician: she has no programme, no experience and no views on policy that anyone can name. Some say the party uses her age to embarrass the police. And PML-N supporters say that the result in NA-71 was simply a loss, as the family’s two earlier attempts had been.

Each view has merit. She is a symbol first. But symbols matter in politics, and about a hundred thousand recorded votes in a first election is not something a mere symbol usually wins.

Words used in this article

Timeline: Rehana Dar at a glance

Why her story matters

• It shows where the PTI’s support held firm. When leaders left, voters and families often did not.
• It shows how the 2024 election is remembered. For millions of people the argument about Form 45 and Form 47 has a face, and in Sialkot it is hers.
• It shows a new kind of woman in politics. She did not come through a reserved seat or a party wing. She came through a contest on a general seat against a heavyweight.

To understand the system she ran in, read our explainer on the National Assembly and our plain-English guide to Pakistan’s politics.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• ARY News, “NA-71: Khawaja Asif clinches victory against Rehana Dar” — February 2024.
• Wikipedia, “NA-71 Sialkot-II” — constituency history, as last edited on 2 April 2026.
• Wikipedia, “Usman Dar” — as last edited on 6 October 2026.
• Daily Pakistan, “Nomination papers of Usman Dar’s mother, sister-in-law rejected” — 30 December 2023.
• Geo News, “Usman Dar’s mother briefly arrested as PTI takes out rallies to mark May 9 anniversary” — 9 May 2024.
• Daily Pakistan, “PTI leader Rehana Dar arrested in Sialkot amid first anniversary of May 9 tragedy”
• Dawn, report on PTI protests and the party’s claim of her detention — August 2025.
• Aaj English, “Rehana Dar arrest sparks uproar amid PTI protest” — August 2025.