Shibli Faraz: Biography, Education, Family, Senate Career, Conviction and Disqualification (2026)

Who is Shibli Faraz?

Here is the first thing people notice about him. He does not behave like a Pakistani politician.

He speaks quietly. He rarely insults opponents. He has no constituency, no clan and no fortune behind him. What he has is a famous name of an unusual kind, the name of a poet, and a career before politics that reads like three different lives.

For ten years he was the PTI’s steady hand in the Senate, the member the party trusted to manage a house in which it was usually outnumbered. Then a court verdict about events in a city he does not represent removed him from Parliament.

Shibli Faraz carried a poet’s name into politics and tried to bring a poet’s manners with it. He was one of the few in his party whom opponents found it hard to dislike.

The son of Ahmad Faraz

His father, Ahmad Faraz, was born in Kohat in 1931 and died in 2008. He is counted among the great Urdu poets of the twentieth century.

Ahmad Faraz wrote love poems that every educated Pakistani can recite, and he wrote poems of protest that got him into trouble. He was arrested under General Zia-ul-Haq for verses critical of military rule and spent years in exile. Late in life, under another general, he handed back one of the state’s highest honours in protest.

So the son of a man who spent his life defying generals ended up, decades later, convicted in a case about attacks on military buildings. Supporters and critics draw opposite lessons from that.

His uncle, Barrister Masood Kausar, was a senior lawyer who served as Governor of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

The family is Pashtun, from Kohat, a garrison town south of Peshawar.

Education

The Colombian degree is the surprise. Very few Pakistanis study in South America. He came back speaking Spanish, alongside Urdu, English, Pashto and Hindko.

Three careers before politics

His public biography lists three earlier occupations.

1. Pilot. He served in the Pakistan Air Force. He still holds a commercial pilot’s licence.
2. Civil servant. He worked in government service.
3. Investment banker. He then moved to finance.

Each left a mark on his politics. He understands how the military thinks, how the bureaucracy works and how money moves.

Into the Senate, 2015

He was elected to the Senate in March 2015 on a PTI ticket from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where the party ran the provincial government. He was re-elected in 2021.

Senators are chosen by the members of each provincial assembly. A party’s leader decides who gets its tickets. He was Imran Khan’s choice.

In his first years he chaired Senate committees on commerce and on the power sector’s debts.

Leader of the House, 2018 to 2020

When the PTI formed the federal government in August 2018, Imran Khan named him Leader of the House in the Senate.

An awkward job

It was harder than it sounds. The PTI had won the National Assembly. But only half the Senate is elected every three years, so the upper house still reflected the old balance. The opposition had more senators than the government.

As Leader of the House he had to get the government’s business through a chamber it did not control. That takes patience and good personal relations with the other side. He had both.

When the two houses could not agree, the government fell back on a joint sitting, in which all members of both houses vote together and the larger National Assembly tips the balance. Several important laws were passed that way.

The watch-list laws

The clearest example came in 2020. Pakistan was on the grey list of the Financial Action Task Force, the international body that polices money laundering. To get off the list it had to pass a set of laws by a deadline.

The opposition, which controlled the Senate, objected to parts of the bills. It said they gave investigators sweeping powers that would be turned on the government’s critics. The Senate rejected some of them.

The government called a joint sitting and passed the laws there. As Leader of the House in the Senate until that summer, he had been at the centre of the earlier effort to find agreement. The episode left bad feeling on both sides, and it is one reason the upper house was so tense when his party later found itself in opposition.

Minister for Information, 2020 to 2021

On 27 April 2020 he was appointed Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting, the government’s chief spokesman.

The appointment was read as a change of tone. His predecessors in the job had been combative. He was expected to be calmer.

In the post he:

• defended the government’s handling of the pandemic;
• criticised the opposition’s leaders over their court cases and their alliance against the government;
• spoke in support of a law to protect journalists.

He was moved in a cabinet reshuffle in April 2021.

Minister for Science and Technology, 2021 to 2022

His next portfolio produced one of the most argued-over projects of that government: electronic voting machines.

The government wanted the next general election to be held on machines instead of paper ballots, and wanted Pakistanis abroad to be able to vote over the internet. His ministry built a prototype machine and demonstrated it.

The Election Commission and the opposition objected. They said the machines were untested, could be tampered with and could not be bought and deployed in time. The law allowing them was pushed through a joint sitting in late 2021. The next government reversed it in 2022.

He left office with the rest of the cabinet in April 2022.

The helicopter

One episode from September 2022 added to his reputation.

On 20 September 2022 Imran Khan was leaving a rally in Chakwal by helicopter. Shibli Faraz and two others were on board. The pilot was taken ill in the air.

The former air force officer took the controls and landed the aircraft safely.

Leader of the Opposition in the Senate, 2024 to 2025

After the election of February 2024 the PTI was the largest opposition force. On 22 April 2024 he became Leader of the Opposition in the Senate, on Imran Khan’s nomination and with the support of 21 senators.

He led the party’s senators through a hard period.

• In October 2024 the government passed the 26th Constitutional Amendment, which changed how judges are chosen. His party opposed it and accused the government of pressuring senators.
• Through 2024 and 2025 he raised the detention of Imran Khan, the trials of civilians in military courts and the conduct of the February election.

His counterpart in the National Assembly was Omar Ayub Khan. The two would lose their posts on the same day.

The conviction, July 2025

On 31 July 2025 an anti-terrorism court in Faisalabad gave its verdict in a case about the events of 9 May 2023 in that city.

• It convicted more than a hundred people.
• Among them were the two Leaders of the Opposition and other PTI members of Parliament.
• He was sentenced to ten years in prison.
• He was not present. He was tried in his absence.

His position, and his party’s, is that the trials were unfair and were designed to strip the opposition of its leaders. Rights groups and opposition parties voiced the same concern. The government says the courts acted on evidence.

What followed

Unlike Omar Ayub Khan, who withdrew his appeal, he chose to fight his disqualification in court. What the Peshawar High Court decided after the case was sent back was not found for this article.

The seat itself stayed with his party. Because senators are elected by the provincial assembly, and the PTI controls that assembly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, its candidate won the by-election comfortably.

How a Senate by-election works

His replacement was chosen within three months. The process is quick because the voters are few.

In ordinary Senate elections, with many seats filled at once, the voting uses a system of ranked preferences. For a single seat it is a simple contest.

What supporters and critics say

Supporters call him the most decent man in the PTI’s front rank. They say he never used abusive language, treated opponents with courtesy and held the party’s senators together for a decade. They regard his conviction, for events in a city far from his home, as plainly political.

Critics make their own case. Opponents say that as Information Minister he defended a government that was itself jailing opposition leaders and squeezing the press. They say the voting machines were an attempt to change the rules of the election in his party’s favour. Some in his own party found him too mild for a time that called for a fighter. And some note the irony of Ahmad Faraz’s son serving a party that, in office, enjoyed the military’s backing.

Each view has merit. He was a courteous man in a harsh trade, and he also served loyally in a government whose record on freedoms is disputed. His father’s poems are quoted by both sides.

Words used in this article

Timeline: Shibli Faraz at a glance

Why his story matters

• It shows that manners are possible in politics. Even opponents acknowledged his restraint.
• It shows how the opposition was reshaped by the courts. Within a week in 2025, both houses lost their opposition leaders.
• It raises a real constitutional question. When exactly does a convicted member lose a seat: at the first verdict, or after the last appeal?

To see how the house he served in works, read our explainer on the Senate of Pakistan and our plain-English guide to Pakistan’s politics.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• Wikipedia, “Shibli Faraz” — as last edited on 4 October 2026.
• The News, “Conviction in May 9 cases: PTI parliamentarians Shibli Faraz, Omar Ayub, others disqualified” — August 2025.
• Aaj English, “Peshawar High Court halts ECP action against Omar Ayub, Shibli Faraz” — 6 August 2025.
• Daily Times, “Peshawar HC grants bail to Shibli Faraz, Zartaj Gul” — August 2025.
• Associated Press of Pakistan, “Supreme Court: Omar Ayub withdraws all petitions; notice issued on Shibli Faraz’s appeal” — 27 October 2025.
• The News, “SC rejects Shibli’s plea to stop Senate by-election” — October 2025.
• Dunya News, “KP Senate by-election: PTI-backed Khurram Zeeshan triumphs after Shibli Faraz disqualification” — 30 October 2025.
• Senate of Pakistan, current members