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| Mehbooba Mufti profile | | |
ET Report
Srinagar, Apr 4: The PDP president Mehbooba Mufti created history by becoming the first woman to assume the office of Chief Minister in Jammu and Kashmir.
Eldest of four siblings - two sisters and one brother - Mehbooba has two daughters, Illtija Iqbal and Irtiqa Iqbal.
She is now the first woman chief minister of the country's only Muslim majority state, heading an alliance of the regional Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the centrist, right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Mehbooba fought her first elections from the ancestral Bijbehara (Anantnag) assembly constituency in 1996.
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 has been elected to the Lok Sabha from Anantnag seat in 2004 and 2014.
She was instrumental in resurrecting her late father Mufti Muhammad Sayeed's political career when he formed the PDP and decided to challenge the well-entrenched regional National Conference (NC) on its own turf.
Those close to her say despite her no-nonsense pragmatic approach to politics, Mehbooba has always maintained a strong link with the party's ground-level workers. "It was because of her knowledge about the ground situation that Mufti sahib would always say his daughter is more connected to the ground than him," said a close confident of Mehbboba Mufti.
Despite the fact that her political baptism happened by fire when separatist violence was at its peak in Jammu and Kashmir, this is her first innings at governance.
Mehbooba is a politician by choice who responded to a political situation when Jammu and Kashmir was in the grip of a gloomy scenario of violence and its tragic fallout as the State was reeling under extremely adverse conditions on politico-economic fronts.
Distressed by the tragedies of turmoil, Mehbooba and her father Mufti Mohammad Sayeed decided to reach out to the people and re-establish the lost contact between the citizens and the State to repair their hurt psyche, salvage their bruised dignity, rekindle a new hope in their hearts and motivate them to mould their destiny through a participatory political process.
She is one of the few politicians in Jammu and Kashmir, who has traversed every nook and corner of the State, sometimes covering extensive treacherous distances on foot, with no cavalcades, not many escorts, no jammers and no cell phones to reach out to the people.
In 2002 assembly elections, people recognized PDP as an emerging and alternative political force in the State and gave it a modest mandate which led to the historic initiatives in J&K with the famous punch-line of "Healing Touch". While Mufti Mohammad Sayeed was busy steering the State out of the most terrible era of its history, Ms Mehbooba's strenuous work at the grassroots level produced an instant impact of the substantial politico-economic measures initiated by the then Government.
She schooled from Presentation Convent School in Srinagar and graduated in English literature from Government College for Women, Parade in Jammu. She went on to obtain a degree in Law from University of Kashmir and got married soon after completion of her law degree. But her marriage later ran into problems.
She shifted to New Delhi in 0ctober 1989 and joined Bombay Mercantile Bank to be financially independent to take care of her infant daughters. She also worked with East West Airlines for sometime before moving back to J&K.
Mehbooba left the job and returned to the State to help her father in his political work. She contested her maiden assembly election in 1996 from the home.
Mehbooba is so entrenched in local culture that the power hasn't changed her. She is known for her compassion, courteousness and respect for her colleagues and common people. Given her value system of high personal and ideological integrity, s Mehbooba is set to question and change the traditional politics of the State to create a new narrative of public and political discourse.
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