Mehbooba Mufti

She is the daughter of Mufti Mohammad Sayeed and Gulshan Ara, born in 1959 in Akhran Nowpora, J&K, India. She graduated in English literature from Government College for Women in Jammu, and has a law degree from the University of Kashmir. Post 1989, she shifted to N. Delhi and joined the Bombay Mercantile Bank, after which she worked with East West Airlines, before moving back to J&K. ==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. She later served 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 incumbent 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. 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. On 19 June 2018, she resigned as chief minister of Kashmir. Her government had been an alliance between the Peoples' Democratic Party (PDP) and the BJP, but there was a rift in the alliance in February 2018, when two BJP ministers expressed public support for a man who was alleged to have raped and killed an eight-year-old girl in Kathua District. Mehbooba and the state government had tried suspending security operations for Ramadan, but the militants had not reciprocated, and later also lost the 2024 Lok Sabha elections from Anantanag - Rajouri seat to Mian Altaf Ahmed Larvi of National Conference with 2.3 lakh votes. == Detention ==

On 5 August 2019, she was detained by the Central government. In November, Iltija Mufti wrote 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 Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act. She was released on 13 October 2020. On 25 November 2020, former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister and People's Democratic Party chief Mehbooba Mufti was detained by Jammu and Kashmir Police and was not allowed to visit South Kashmir's Pulwama to meet the family of senior PDP leader Waheed Para, who was arrested by the National Investigating Agency earlier that week. Mufti said that her daughter Iltija Mufti has also been placed under house arrest. == See also ==