PTI Leaders List: Founder, Chairman & Senior Leadership

Who leads the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf? The answer is more complicated than a single name. This guide explains the PTI’s leadership structure — founder, chairman, secretary general, vice chairman, president and the apex political committee — and the dispute at the very top.

The Founder: Imran Khan

Imran Khan founded the PTI on 25 April 1996, led it from a single National Assembly seat in 2002 to a Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government in 2013 and the federal government in 2018, serving as Prime Minister until April 2022. Since 2023 he has been incarcerated at Adiala Jail, Rawalpindi, convicted in multiple cases his party calls politically motivated. Despite imprisonment, he remains the party’s founder, its electoral symbol in spirit, and the authority behind every major decision — including the December 2025 political committee.

The Chairman Question

After the Election Commission stripped the PTI of its electoral symbol ahead of the 2024 elections over flawed intra-party polls, the party held fresh internal elections in December 2023 and Barrister Gohar Ali Khan — a lawyer from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa — became chairman. In early 2026, however, secretary general Salman Akram Raja publicly declined to recognise Gohar as chairman, telling reporters at Adiala Jail that “only Imran Khan is the party chairman” and describing the situation as coercion by the Election Commission. Gohar responded that he remains in office “as long as the founder has trust in me”. The dispute reflects the party’s broader crisis: a leadership that cannot freely meet its founder — at times going more than a month without access — and must operate under intense state pressure.

The Second Tier

• Salman Akram Raja — Secretary General; the party’s public face and negotiator.
• Shah Mehmood Qureshi — Vice Chairman; twice Foreign Minister; incarcerated.
• Parvez Elahi — President; former Punjab Chief Minister; incarcerated.
• Sheikh Waqas Akram — Information Secretary.
• Omar Ayub Khan — former Secretary General; senior parliamentarian.
• Shibli Faraz — former federal minister; Senate leader.
• Asad Qaiser — former National Assembly Speaker.
• Sohail Afridi — Chief Minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the PTI’s only provincial government.
• Aliya Hamza, Junaid Akbar, Haleem Adil Sheikh, Amir Dogar — committee leaders across the provinces.

Below them sit the parliamentary parties: PTI-backed members in the National Assembly (elected as independents in 2024 and aligned with the Sunni Ittehad Council), the Senate, and the Punjab, Sindh and KP assemblies.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is the leader of PTI?

Imran Khan is the founder and ultimate leader. Day-to-day leadership rests with chairman Barrister Gohar Ali Khan and secretary general Salman Akram Raja — though the two disagree publicly over the chairmanship.

Why is there a dispute over PTI’s chairman?

Secretary general Salman Akram Raja argues the December 2023 intra-party process lacked a proper democratic mandate and that, given the Election Commission’s treatment of the party, only Imran Khan should be recognised as chairman. Gohar Ali Khan says he serves with the founder’s trust.

Who is the vice chairman of PTI?

Shah Mehmood Qureshi, the former Foreign Minister (2008–11, 2018–22), who is currently incarcerated.

Who runs PTI’s social media?

The party’s powerful social media operation is run largely by overseas chapters and volunteers — a point of internal contention, with senior leaders including Gohar, Raja and information secretary Sheikh Waqas Akram pushing in 2026 for stricter internal oversight of official accounts.