Mufti Mohammad Sayeed

Early life

Sayeed was born on 12 January 1936, in Bijbehara, Anantnag district, then part of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, India, into a Kashmiri Sunni Muslim clerical family. He completed his basic studies in Srinagar and earned his law and postgraduate degree in Arabic from Aligarh Muslim University before entering politics.

His daughter, Mehbooba Mufti, is a politician and former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir.

Political party affiliations

Sayeed started his political career in the 1950s in the Democratic National Conference, a splinter group of the Jammu & Kashmir National Conference led by Ghulam Mohammed Sadiq. He was appointed as the district convenor of the party, which merged back into the National Conference in late 1960.

In 1962, he was elected to the Legislative Assembly from Bijbehara. After G. M. Sadiq became the chief minister of the state in 1964, Sayeed was appointed as a deputy minister in his government.

In January 1965, the National Conference merged into the Indian National Congress. Thus Sayeed became a member of Congress.

In 1972, Sayeed became a cabinet minister and, the president of the state Congress unit. He joined the Rajiv Gandhi's government in 1986 as minister of Tourism. In 1987, he quit the Congress party to join V. P. Singh's Jan Morcha, which led to him becoming the first Muslim minister for Home Affairs in the Union Cabinet of India for one year, from 1989 to 1990.

He rejoined the Congress under P. V. Narasimha Rao, which he left in 1999 along with his daughter Mehbooba Mufti to form his own party, the Jammu and Kashmir Peoples Democratic Party.

Political career

Chief Minister: First tenure (2002–2005)

Sayeed participated in the 2002 assembly election and won 18 assembly seats for his Peoples Democratic Party. He went on to form a coalition government with the Indian National Congress, and was sworn in as the chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir for a term of three years.

In 2003, he merged the autonomous Special Operations Group with the Jammu and Kashmir Police. It was under his tenure which coincided with the peace process led by Indian prime ministers Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh and Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf, with LOC opened for trade and bus service.

Chief Minister: Second tenure (2015–2016)

In the 2014 Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly election, the PDP emerged as the single largest party, though it fell short of a majority. Following a coalition agreement between the BJP and the PDP, Sayeed started his second tenure as the chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir in 2015.

Union Minister for Home Affairs

In 1989, within few days of taking office as the Union Minister for Home Affairs, his third daughter, Rubaiya, was kidnapped in 1989. Under pressure, she was released from captivity. The terrorists were emboldened by this release and this was a turning point in the history of Kashmir militancy which left a long lasting impact in Kashmir. In 1990 the exodus of Kashmiri Hindus happened from the valley of Kashmir. During his tenure as Home Minister of India the Exodus of Kashmiri Hindus took place.

Attacks on his family and himself

Main article: 1989 kidnapping of Rubaiya Sayeed

Besides attacks on family members Sayeed also survived attacks on his life by Kashmiri separatists. His daughter Rubaiya Sayeed was also kidnapped on 9 December 1989.

Death

On 24 December 2015, Sayeed was admitted to the AIIMS hospital in New Delhi. He suffered from neck pain and fever. His condition gradually deteriorated, and he was put on ventilator support. He died on 7 January 2016 due to multi-organ failure at about 7:30, according to provincial Education Minister and PDP Spokesman Nayeem Akhter. He was just five days short of his 80th birthday when he died.

Reactions to this death came from prime minister Narendra Modi, national Home Minister Rajnath Singh at Delhi airport and the 14th Dalai Lama. He was buried at his ancestral burial ground in Bijbehera with state honours. Former chief ministers Omar Abdullah and Ghulam Nabi Azad were present at his funeral. Condolences also came from former president Pranab Mukherjee, former deputy prime minister L. K. Advani, Ram Madhav, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, BJP vice president Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, former national Oil minister Milind Deora, PDP member Rafi Mir and politicians Kalraj Mishra, Jitendra Singh and Ahmed Patel.

According to party member and PDP chief spokesperson Mirza Mehboob Beg, the PDP supported his daughter, Mehbooba Mufti, as the next chief minister, while coalition ally BJP expressed "no objection" to her succeeding her father.

Sayeed was buried in Dara Shikoh Garden in Bijbehara.

References

Bibliography

References

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