Former Punjab chief minister and speaker, Manzoor Wattoo, has passed away, confirmed his family on Tuesday.

Born on August 14, 1939, Wattoo embarked on his political journey in 1983 when he was elected chairman of the Okara District Council. Two years later, in 1985, he entered the Punjab Assembly and was appointed its speaker.

Wattoo returned to the Punjab Assembly in 1988 as an independent legislator before joining Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League under the Islami Jamhoori Ittehad (IJI) alliance, earning reelection as assembly speaker.

In the 1993 elections, he won seats in both the National Assembly and Punjab Assembly on the IJI ticket, choosing to serve provincially and securing his third consecutive term as speaker. Later that year, Wattoo led a no-confidence motion that ousted the PML-N government of Ghulam Haider Wyne. With support from the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), he became Punjab’s chief minister despite having backing from only a small faction of lawmakers.

His alliance with the PPP ended in 1995, and Benazir Bhutto appointed Arif Nakai as Punjab’s chief minister. That same year, Wattoo formed the Pakistan Muslim League–Jinnah after disagreements with his cousin, Hamid Nasir Chattha.

In 1996, he won a National Assembly seat under the PML-Jinnah banner but later faced corruption charges, leading to a brief imprisonment. After being cleared, Wattoo joined the Pakistan Muslim League–Quaid (PML-Q) during General Pervez Musharraf’s rule, merging his PML-Jinnah faction into PML-Q on Musharraf’s advice.

Following the 2008 general elections, Wattoo contested as an independent, winning two National Assembly seats from Okara. He retained one, while his son Khurram Jehangir won the other in a PPP by-election. In October 2012, Wattoo was appointed president of the PPP in central Punjab. He also served as federal minister for Kashmir affairs during the PPP-led government from 2008 to 2013.