| Mufti Mohammad Sayeed | |
| Office: | 6th Chief Minister of the state of Jammu & Kashmir |
| Deputy: | Nirmal Kumar Singh |
| Term Start: | 1 March 2015 |
| Term End: | 7 January 2016 |
| Governor: | Narinder Nath Vohra |
| Predecessor: | Omar Abdullah |
| Successor: | Mehbooba Mufti |
| Governor1: | Girish Chandra Saxena Srinivas Kumar Sinha |
| Term Start1: | 2 November 2002 |
| Term End1: | 2 November 2005 |
| Predecessor1: | Governor's rule |
| Successor1: | Ghulam Nabi Azad |
| Office2: | Minister of Home Affairs |
| Primeminister2: | V. P. Singh |
| Term Start2: | 2 December 1989 |
| Term End2: | 10 November 1990 |
| Predecessor2: | Sardar Buta Singh |
| Successor2: | Chandra Shekhar |
| Office3: | Minister of Tourism |
| Primeminister3: | Rajiv Gandhi |
| Term Start3: | 12 May 1986 |
| Term End3: | 14 July 1987 |
| Predecessor3: | HKL Bhagat |
| Successor3: | Jagdish Tytler |
| Birth Date: | 1936 1, df=yes |
| Birth Place: | Bijbehara, Jammu & Kashmir, British India |
| Death Place: | New Delhi, India |
| Office4: | Member of Parliament, Lok Sabha |
| Constituency4: | Anantnag |
| Predecessor4: | Mohammad Maqbool Dar |
| Successor4: | Ali Mohammed Naik |
| Constituency5: | Muzaffarnagar |
| Predecessor5: | Dharamvir Singh Tyagi |
| Successor5: | Naresh Kumar Baliyan |
| Party: | Jammu and Kashmir Peoples Democratic Party |
| Nationality: | Indian |
| Children: | 4 (including Mehbooba Mufti, Tassaduq Hussain Mufti, Mehmooda Sayeed, and Rubaiya Sayeed) |
| Alma Mater: | Aligarh Muslim University |
| Occupation: | Politician |
Mufti Mohammad Sayeed (12 January 19367 January 2016; Urdu: مفتی محمد سید) was an Indian politician who served as the chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir twice from November 2002 to November 2005 and from March 2015 until his death on January 7, 2016. He held various positions, including minister of Tourism in Rajiv Gandhi's cabinet and minister of Home Affairs in V. P. Singh's cabinet.[1] Sayeed began his political career in the wing of the National Conference led by G. M. Sadiq, which later merged with the Indian National Congress. In 1987, he transitioned to the Janata Dal and subsequently founded the People's Democratic Party (PDP), a regional political party that remains influential in Jammu and Kashmir, currently led by his daughter, Mehbooba Mufti.
Sayeed was born on 12 January 1936, in Bijbehara, Anantnag district, then part of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, British India, into a Kashmiri Shia 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.[2] [3] [4] [5] [6]
His daughter, Mehbooba Mufti, is a politician and former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir.[7] [8] [9]
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,[10] 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.[10]
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.[10] [11] He joined the Rajiv Gandhi's government in 1986 as minister of Tourism.[11] 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.[12] [13]
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.
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.[14]
In 2003, he merged the autonomous Special Operations Group with the Jammu and Kashmir Police.[15] 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.[16]
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.[17]
In 1989, within few days of taking office as the Union Minister for Home Affairs, his third daughter, Rubaiya, was kidnapped in 1989.[18] Under pressure, she was released from captivity. During his tenure as Home Minister of India the Exodus of Kashmiri Hindus took place.[19] [20] [21]
See 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.[18]
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[22] [23] 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.[24] He was buried at his ancestral burial ground in Bijbehera[25] 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.[26]
According to party member and PDP chief spokesperson Mirza Mehboob Beg,[26] the PDP supported his daughter, Mehbooba Mufti, as the next chief minister, while coalition ally BJP expressed "no objection" to her succeeding her father.[27]
Sayeed has been laid to rest in Dara Shikoh Garden Bijbehara.[28]
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