Mehbooba Mufti

Mehbooba Mufti محبوبہ مُفتی
Member of the India Parliament for Anantnag
In office 2014-till date
Constituency	Anantnag
Personal details
Born	(1959-05-22) 22 May 1959 Bijbehara, Jammu and Kashmir, India
Political party	PDP
Children	2 daughters
Relatives	Mufti Mohammad Sayeed (Father)
Residence	Sonwar, Srinagar
Alma mater	University of Kashmir (Law)
Website	www.jkpdp.org
Source: [1]

Mehbooba Mufti Sayeed (Urdu, محبوبہ مُفتی )

(born 22 May 1959 in Akhran Nowpora, Anantnag district in India) is the president of the Jammu & Kashmir Peoples Democratic Party. She is the daughter of former Home minister of India and Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed. Her sister Rubaiya was famously kidnapped when their father was appointed India's Home Minister in 1989, and released after a few days.

Mehbooba Mufti was a member of the 14th Lok Sabha (2004-2009), representing the Anantnag constituency of Jammu and Kashmir. Her party, PDP, failed to win a single seat in Lok Sabha elections in 2009 and she did not contest that year herself. But in 2014, she was elected again to Lok Sabha from Anantnag constituency.

Early life

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 divorced 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.

Political career

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 has been elected to the Lok Sabha from Anantnag seat in 2004 and 2014.

External links

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