Shehbaz Sharif

Mian Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif (born 23 September 1951) is a Pakistani politician and businessman who has served as prime minister of Pakistan since March 2024, having previously held the office from April 2022 to August 2023 — the only person to hold it for two consecutive terms in this way. He served three terms as chief minister of Punjab, spanning over twelve years, making him the longest-serving holder of that office, and he was leader of the opposition and president of the Pakistan Muslim League (N). ^{1 2}

Sharif was born on 23 September 1951 in Lahore. His family is Punjabi with Kashmiri ancestry; his father, Mian Muhammad Sharif, was a businessman and industrialist whose family migrated from Amritsar to Lahore after partition and who founded the Ittefaq Group. Shehbaz attended St. Anthony High School, Lahore, and took a B.A. from Government College University, Lahore, before joining the family business; he was elected president of the Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry in 1985. He has two brothers, Abbas Sharif and Nawaz Sharif, the latter a three-time prime minister of Pakistan. ^{1 3}

He entered politics in 1988 with election to the Punjab Assembly, was elected to the National Assembly in 1990, and became leader of the opposition in Punjab in 1993. He was elected chief minister of Punjab for the first time on 20 February 1997, focusing on healthcare, education, agriculture and industry and launching a crackdown on criminals. Removed in the 1999 coup, he was exiled with his family to Saudi Arabia in 2000 and returned to Pakistan in 2007. He was elected chief minister a second time in 2008 and a third time in 2013, serving until 2018. ^{1 2}

After his brother Nawaz Sharif was disqualified from office in the wake of the Panama Papers case, Shehbaz was nominated president of the PML(N), and after the 2018 election he became leader of the opposition. In April 2022 he was elected prime minister after the no-confidence motion against Imran Khan passed, serving until August 2023. After the 2024 general election he became prime minister again in March 2024 with a coalition government. ¹

The cases are recorded here with their outcomes, as the sources state them, and not as settled guilt. In the Sabzazar case, arising from a 1998 police encounter in Lahore, Sharif was accused of having allowed the Punjab Police, as chief minister, to carry out extrajudicial killings; he denied ordering the killings and called the charges politically motivated, and he was acquitted by the Anti-Terrorism Court in 2008. In a money-laundering case opened by the National Accountability Bureau, he was arrested in September 2020 and held during the investigation; he was granted bail by the Lahore High Court in April 2021; in May 2022 the Federal Investigation Agency said it would not pursue the case; and on 12 October 2022 the Special Court Central in Lahore acquitted Sharif and his son Hamza on all charges of corruption and money laundering, his lawyer describing the case as baseless and politically motivated. ¹

This section sets out positions as reported in the sources; it is not a verdict by the museum. During his tenure Pakistan has faced high inflation and economic difficulty, and his administration has faced criticism over the economic burden on low-income households, corruption and weak accountability in the public sector, the imprisonment of Imran Khan, and restrictions on freedom of expression documented by human rights organisations including Human Rights Watch. Opposition groups have accused his government of benefiting from alleged rigging in the 2024 election, allegations the government disputes. On foreign policy, he has received international praise for Pakistan's diplomatic role in efforts to mediate between Iran and the United States and for strengthening defence cooperation. ¹

Neither the English nor the Arabic article names a religion or school for Shehbaz Sharif. What exists is a structured value in Wikidata (Sunni Islam) and a "Pakistani Sunnis" category filing in the Urdu article — and a filing is not an attestation. His faith is therefore recorded as unknown under the two-source rule. ^{4 3}

Sharif married Begum Nusrat in 1973, Aaliya Honey in 1993 (divorced 1994), and the writer Tehmina Durrani in 2003. He has four children, including Hamza Shehbaz, a former chief minister of Punjab. ¹

• The defined source entities cited above, recorded in data/source/.
• Revisions of this article must be dated, and must name the source that changed each fact.