Ramesh Kumar Vankwani

Ramesh Kumar Vankwani is a Pakistani politician who had been a member of the National Assembly of Pakistan, from August 2018 till August 2023. But in 2022 he left PTI to join PPP. Previously he was member of the National Assembly from June 2013 to May 2018 and a member of the Provincial Assembly of Sindh from 2002 to 2007. He was considered a strongest candidate to contest general elections 2024 from NA-241 Karachi on the ticket of PPP. However, he was not awarded the ticket and his nomination on the reserved seats in National Assembly was not liked by the ideological workers of PPP on the bases that he had been known changing political parties in the past two decades.

Education and background Vankwani possesses bachelor's degree of medicine and bachelor's degree of surgery. He was born in Islamkot, Tharparkar in 1974, into a Sindhi Hindu family.

Political career

Vankwani ran for the seat of the Provincial Assembly of Sindh as an independent candidate from Constituency PS-61 (Tharparkar-II) in the 2002 Pakistani general election, but was unsuccessful. He received 34 votes and lost the seat to a candidate of National Alliance. In the same election, he was elected to the Provincial Assembly of Sindh as a candidate of Pakistan Muslim League (Q) on a reserved seat for minorities. in 2005.

Vankwani was elected to the National Assembly of Pakistan as a candidate of Pakistan Muslim League (N) (PML-N) on a reserved seat for minorities in the 2013 Pakistani general election.

Vankwani came to the limelight in September 2014, when he along with Rehman Malik was removed from a flight from Karachi to Islamabad because of their late check-in which caused the flight to delay.

In January 2018, he was elected as the chairman of the National Assembly's Standing Committee for Statistics. In April 2018, he quit PML-N and joined Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).

He was re-elected to the National Assembly as a candidate of PTI on a reserved seat for minorities in 2018 Pakistani general election. He stood against his party policy in no confidence motion.

On 13 May 2024, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) suspended his membership as a member of the National Assembly. This action followed a Supreme Court of Pakistan decision to suspend the verdict of the Peshawar High Court, which had denied the allocation of a reserved seat to the PTI-Sunni Ittehad Council bloc.