Mehbooba Mufti


Mehbooba Mufti is an Indian politician of the Jammu and Kashmir Peoples Democratic Party, who served last Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, autonomous State from 4 April 2016 to 19 June 2018. Mehbooba Mufti is currently lodged by Govt. of UT of J&K under PSA. She formed a coalition government with the Bharatiya JAnta Party and resigned on 19 June 2018 after the BJP withdrew from the coalition. Since 5 August 2019 she has been under detention.
Mufti was the first and the last woman to hold the office of Chief Minister in the state. She is the president of the PDP and was a member of the Indian parliament, representing Anantnag in the 16th Lok Sabha; before she was sworn in as the Chief Minister of J&K. She had previously represented Anantnag in the 14th Lok Sabha but did not contest the 2009 election for the 15th Lok Sabha.

Early life

She is the daughter of Mufti Mohammad Sayeed and Gulshan Ara, born in 1959 in Akhran Nowpora. She earned her law degree from the University of Kashmir. Her ex-husband is a political analyst, an animal-rights activist and was also briefly with National Conference party. She has two daughters, Iltija and Irtiqa.

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 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 Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah with asperity.
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. She 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 from Anantnag seat in 2004 and 2014.
After her father's death in January 2016, when he was heading the coalition government in Jammu and Kashmir, she took forward the same alliance with Bhartiya Janata Party, the second time the BJP and the PDP formed a government in Jammu and Kashmir. On 4 April 2016, she took the oath and became the first woman Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir.
On 25 June 2016, she won an Assembly seat in a by-election in Anantnag with the highest margin in any recent elections there and thereafter focussed on settling of Rohingyas.
She again contested 2019 Lok Sabha elections from Anantnag seat but lost it to Hasnain Masoodi of National Conference..

Detention

On 5 August 2019, she was detained by the Central government. She has been under detention since. Her daughter Iltija Mufti took over her mother's Twitter account on the 46th day of detention. In November, Iltija Mufti had written a letter to the Srinagar Deputy Commissioner to shift her mother to a place better equipped for the valley's winter.
In February 2020 she was further detained under the Public Safety Act.