Mehbooba Mufti

Mehbooba Mufti Sayeed (born 22 May 1959 in Akhran Nowpora, Anantnag district in India) is the president of the Jammu & Kashmir Peoples Democratic Party.^[1] She is the daughter of former Home minister of India and Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed and his wife Gulshan Nazir. She was a member of the 14th Lok Sabha, representing the Anantnag constituency of Jammu and Kashmir.^[1]

After earning her law degree from the University of Kashmir, she remained uninvolved in public life during the late 1980s while bringing up two infant daughters, Iltija and Irtiqa. She later separated from her husband, who went on to pursue an independent political career.

When elections for the state assembly were held in 1996, Mehbooba became one of the most popular members - elected from Bijbehara on an Indian National Congress ticket. Her father had at that time returned to the Congress, which he had left in 1987, angry at the alliance that party had formed with its traditional rival in the state, the National Conference. Mehbooba quickly made a mark as the leader of the opposition in the assembly, taking on the government of then chief minister Farooq Abdullah with asperity.

Mehbooba is one of the few female politicians from Kashmir who is recognized across all India. So high was her public profile that, when Mufti split from the Indian National Congress to form the Jammu & Kashmir Peoples Democratic Party in 1999, many thought she would be the party president. She deferred to her father's experience, however, and became party vice-president. She resigned her assembly seat and went on to contest the parliamentary elections in 1999 from Srinagar, where she lost to the sitting member Omar Abdullah but won the Pahalgam seat in the state assembly from south Kashmir, defeating Rafi Ahmed Mir, when assembly elections were held again in 2002. She was elected to the Lok Sabha in 2004 and was a prominent member of the ruling Congress Party-led coalition.

• Official biographical sketch in Parliament of India website
• State Assembly hall security remove opposition People's Democratic Party

References