Pakistan Software Houses Association for IT and ITeS (PASHA) held its Annual General Meeting (AGM) on September 30, bringing together members and leadership to review the past two years and mark the start of a new term. The meeting featured the presentation of PASHA’s two-year performance report by former Chairman Sajjad Syed, covering the progress and milestones achieved during a term that had been disrupted earlier this year by an internal leadership dispute. That dispute saw eight of PASHA’s 11 CEC members vote no confidence in Syed on August 25, citing concerns over unauthorized activities, before the Directorate General of Trade Organizations (DGTO) ruled the no-confidence resolution null and void on August 28 and restored him as chairman for the remainder of his statutory term.
A key moment of the AGM was the oath-taking ceremony for the newly elected Central Executive Committee for 2026-28, with Dr Shoab Khan, Wahab Yunus, Samad Saleem, Ahmed Vaseer, Dr Faisal Kamiran, Fatima Asad-Said, Khushnood Aftab Shaikh, Muhammad Zohaib Khan, M. Azam Mughal, Shawana Iftikhar, Shaikh Ayaz Ali, and Syed Junaid Ahmad all taking oath, administered by Secretary General Ali Hasani. The 12 members had been elected through voting held on September 17 across polling stations in Karachi, Lahore, and Islamabad, with results initially provisional pending final confirmation at this AGM, following the structure PASHA uses to allocate seats across its corporate class, associate class, and women-reserved categories.
The AGM’s dual agenda, closing out Syed’s eventful two-year term while simultaneously installing the new CEC, gave the meeting added significance beyond a routine annual gathering. Syed’s tenure had included the no-confidence vote, a subsequent petition to the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA) over alleged confidential data and video leaks, and a DGTO verification inquiry into the circumstances of a disputed resignation, all of which had created uncertainty around PASHA’s leadership structure in the weeks before this year’s scheduled CEC elections. Despite that backdrop, the elections proceeded on schedule in September, and the AGM’s oath-taking ceremony signals a formal transition point for the association moving past that period of internal turbulence.
PASHA described the AGM as marking the beginning of a new term and a renewed commitment to the association’s role in supporting Pakistan’s IT and ITeS industry. With Dr Shoab Khan now formally sworn in as Chairman alongside a CEC that includes several members carrying over experience from previous committees, the new leadership team takes charge of an association whose recent institutional stability was tested by the events of the preceding term. Whether the 2026-28 CEC can move past the governance disputes that defined much of the previous two years will likely become clearer as the new committee settles into its policy advocacy and industry representation work in the months ahead.
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