Jammu: Mehbooba Mufti, 56, took oath as the 13th chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir on Monday. The oath ceremony took place in the state’s winter capital Jammu.
Here are few things to know about Mehbooba Mufti:-
- Eldest of four siblings - two sisters and one brother - Mehbooba has two daughters, Illtija Iqbal and Irtiqa Iqbal.
- She would be 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 fought another assembly election in 2002 from the Wachi (Shopian) constituency and her first Lok Sabha election from south Kashmir's Anantnag constituency in 2004.
- She again stood for the Lok Sabha and won from the same constituency in 2014.
- She has never lost an election in her 20-year political career.
- 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.
- According to a senior PDP leader, 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.
