What happened
A proposal to raise Pakistan’s minimum voting age from 18 to 25 drew criticism from opposition parties and civil society on 18 May 2026, after Rana Sanaullah, an adviser to the prime minister on political and public affairs, confirmed it was under discussion as part of a possible 28th Constitutional Amendment, Dawn reported.
Speaking on Geo News, Sanaullah said the idea was to align the voting age with the minimum age of 25 required to contest elections. “If an individual cannot contest an election before the age of 25, then either the age to contest elections should be reduced to 18, or the voting age should be increased,” he said, describing 25 as the age at which a person attains the maturity required to represent an organisation. He cautioned that the discussion did not amount to an official policy position and that it did not mean his party supported it.
Criticism
PTI Information Secretary Sheikh Waqas Akram called the proposal “a masterpiece of political panic masquerading as profound constitutional wisdom”. He said 18-year-olds are recruited to defend the country’s borders and are allowed to marry and work, and argued that lowering the voting age became a global standard in the 20th century. He said the coalition wanted to “march boldly backwards straight into the arms of the UAE, the only outlier on Earth with a voting age of 25”, and linked the proposal to strong youth support for PTI and its founder, Imran Khan.
Ali Hasnain, a researcher and economist at the Lahore University of Management Sciences, cited Pakistan Bureau of Statistics data showing 30.1 million people aged 18 to 24 and said the proposal would disenfranchise 23.7 per cent of the voting-age population. Activist Usama Khilji asked whether under-25s would also be exempt from taxes, arguing there should be “no taxes without representation”. Barrister Abuzar Salman Niazi said the change could breach Article 25 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Pakistan is a party, calling it “constitutional exclusion disguised as legislation”.
Context
Pakistan’s voting age is set by Article 106(2) of the Constitution. It was lowered from 21 to 18 in 2002 under military ruler Pervez Musharraf, bringing the country in line with most democracies. Any change would require a constitutional amendment and a two-thirds majority in parliament.
What remains uncertain
No amendment had been tabled, and it was unclear whether the government would pursue the change. Sanaullah said the matter was only under discussion.
