Usman Dar: Biography, Political Career, the Kamyab Jawan Programme and Why He Left the PTI (2026)

Who is Usman Dar?

Here is the simplest way to see him. Usman Dar spent ten years trying to beat one man in one city, and never quite managed it.

The man was Khawaja Asif, one of the PML-N’s most senior leaders. The city was Sialkot. In 2013 Usman Dar lost badly. In 2018 he lost by a whisker. As a consolation, Imran Khan gave him a national job: running the government’s programme for young people.

For three and a half years he was on television almost daily, announcing loans, scholarships and sports schemes. Then his party lost power, the crackdown of 2023 came, and he disappeared. When he reappeared it was to say he was finished with politics.

Usman Dar is remembered for two things: a youth programme that reached a great many people, and a television interview in which he walked away from the leader he had served.

Family and business

He was born on 28 August 1974 in Sialkot. His family are Punjabi-speaking Kashmiris, a community with a strong presence in the city’s trade.

His father, Imtiazuddin Dar, built a business. Usman Dar is a director in the family’s group of companies.

Sialkot is a city of exporters. Its workshops make sports goods, surgical instruments and leather for the world. Its business families are wealthy, confident and used to dealing directly with foreign buyers. Several have gone into politics.

Education

He holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of the Punjab.

When he was appointed to head the youth programme in 2018, opposition members in the Punjab Assembly tabled a resolution questioning his degree and his fitness for the post. No official finding against his degree was found for this article.

Three elections

The first row is a curiosity: a token candidacy that drew a few dozen votes.

The second and third tell the real story. Between 2013 and 2018 he added more than forty thousand votes. In 2018 he came within a couple of thousand of the winner. He challenged the result. It stood.

For the PTI it was one of the most frustrating results of that election. For him it meant five more years outside Parliament.

Head of the youth programme

Imran Khan did not leave him empty-handed.

The appointment was criticised at once. Opponents said that a man the voters had just rejected was being given a public office and a budget. They pointed to a 2014 court order that had questioned an earlier political appointment to the same post.

Kamyab Jawan: what it was

The words mean “successful youth”. The programme was launched in October 2019.

The background

Pakistan is one of the youngest countries in the world. Almost two-thirds of its people are under thirty. Each year about two million young people reach working age, and the economy does not create that many jobs.

Every government since 2013 has run a youth scheme under the Prime Minister’s name.

The name changes with the government. The contents are much the same.

What it offered

One quarter of the loans were reserved for women.

Did it work?

The honest answer is: partly.

In its favour. Tens of thousands of young people received loans, and many more received training. The loans were made by banks on forms filled in online, which reduced the scope for favouritism. The training courses in computing and freelancing matched what the market wanted.

Against it. The number of applicants ran into the millions; those who received loans were a small fraction. Banks, which bore part of the risk, preferred applicants who already had some assets, so the poorest were the least likely to succeed. Independent evaluations were few, and the government’s own figures were hard to check. And like all such schemes it was run as publicity for the Prime Minister, with his photograph on every banner.

That last point is the lasting criticism. A scheme tied to one leader’s name is renamed or wound down when he goes, and the young people half-way through it are left in the lurch.

After April 2022

Imran Khan’s government was removed by a vote of no confidence in April 2022. He lost his post and returned to Sialkot as one of the party’s main organisers in the city.

2023: disappearance and interview

The crackdown

On 9 May 2023 Imran Khan was arrested, and protesters attacked military buildings. The authorities moved against the PTI across Punjab. Sialkot, with its large cantonment, was no exception.

He went out of public view for months.

September 2023

According to press reports, he was taken away by men in plain clothes in Karachi. His house, his factory and his political office in Sialkot were sealed under a court order. For about three weeks his family and his party said they did not know where he was.

4 October 2023

He reappeared in a recorded television interview.

According to press reports of that interview, he said:

• that he was leaving the PTI and giving up politics;
• that the attacks of 9 May had been planned, and that the party’s chairman had ordered them in order to put pressure on the army’s leadership;
• that he had taken months to reflect before speaking.

No court has ruled on which account is right. His was one of the most damaging of the many such statements of that year, because he had been so close to Imran Khan.

His family’s answer

What happened next was not in anyone’s script.

His mother, Rehana Dar, went before the cameras and said she did not accept her son’s decision. She declared her loyalty to Imran Khan and announced that she would herself stand against Khawaja Asif.

• In December 2023 she said that police had raided the family’s house and blamed Khawaja Asif, who denied it.
• At the end of that month his brother, Umar Dar, was reported missing; the provincial government later told a court that he was in police custody in Sialkot.
• In February 2024 she contested the Sialkot seat as a PTI-backed independent. Official results gave her about 100,000 votes to Khawaja Asif’s 119,000. She says the count was altered.

So the family that he had led in politics for a decade carried on without him, under his mother.

He himself has stayed silent. His public biography describes him as working in the family business.

The rivalry with Khawaja Asif

Three contests, two candidates, one opponent. Few rivalries in Punjab have been so sustained or so personal.

Sialkot, the exporters’ city

To understand why a businessman’s son could challenge one of the country’s best-known politicians, it helps to know the city.

Sialkot is not large, but it is rich by Pakistani standards. Its workshops make footballs, hockey sticks, cricket bats, surgical instruments and leather goods, and sell most of them abroad. The city’s traders are famous for doing things themselves. When they wanted an airport, they built one with their own money. When they wanted a dry port and better roads, they did much the same.

That habit shapes its politics.

• Business families matter. A candidate with a factory, a workforce and a seat in the chamber of commerce starts with a network.
• Voters are used to results. A city that built its own airport is not easily impressed by promises.
• Old loyalties run deep. The same few families have contested the city’s seats for decades, and a newcomer needs several attempts to break in.

Mr Dar fitted the first two points. The third explains why he lost three times.

How government loan schemes for the young work

Kamyab Jawan was not the first scheme of its kind and was not the last. Every government since 2013 has run one, under a different name.

The design has a built-in weakness. Banks decide who gets the money, and banks are cautious. Applicants without property to pledge, who are the people such schemes are meant for, are the least likely to be approved. That is why every version has drawn the same complaint: many apply, few receive.

It also explains why the person fronting the scheme, as Mr Dar did, has less power over it than the title suggests. He could publicise it and press the banks. He could not sign a loan.

What supporters and critics say

Those who think well of him remember an energetic organiser who built the PTI in a PML-N stronghold and ran a programme that put money and skills in the hands of young people who had never had either. Some say that no one should be judged for what he said after weeks in unknown hands.

Critics come from every side. Opponents of the PTI say he was given a public office he had not earned and used it for publicity. PTI supporters say he betrayed his leader and lent his name to a false story, while his own elderly mother showed more courage. And sceptics of the youth programme say its results never matched its advertising.

Each view has merit. He was a capable campaigner and an effective salesman for a popular scheme. What he said in October 2023 damaged the party he had served, and only he knows why he said it.

Words used in this article

Timeline: Usman Dar at a glance

Why his story matters

• It shows how governments use youth schemes. They are part policy and part publicity, and they rarely outlive the government that names them.
• It shows the strain 2023 put on families. A son and a mother took opposite sides in public.
• It shows that leaders can be replaced. The Dar vote in Sialkot did not follow him out of the party. It stayed with the party and with his mother.

To understand the vote that ended the government he served in, read our explainer on the vote of no confidence and our plain-English guide to Pakistan’s politics.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• Wikipedia, “Usman Dar” — as last edited on 6 October 2026.
• Geo News, “PTI stalwart Usman Dar quits party, claims May 9 events aimed at ‘overthrowing’ COAS” — October 2023.
• Dawn, report on Usman Dar’s interview — October 2023.
• Aaj English, report on Usman Dar quitting the PTI — 5 October 2023.
• Daily Pakistan, “Usman Dar’s mother says police raid their house on Khawaja Asif’s behest” — 20 December 2023.
• ARY News, reports tagged “Usman Dar” — including announcements under the Kamyab Jawan Programme.
• Prime Minister’s Youth Programme, official website