Indian Kashmir chief minister dies

Mufti Sayeed was suffering from a respiratory illness

NEW DEHLI: Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, the chief minister of Indian-occupied Kashmir, died of a respiratory illness on Thursday. He was 79 years old.

Sayeed’s Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is in a controversial coalition with Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party in the disputed region. He is likely to be succeeded by his daughter Mehbooba Mufti.

Thousands of locals, including several top politicians, flocked a sports ground in Srinagar to offer his funeral prayers after the body was flown to the city.

A former lawyer, Sayeed was appointed India’s first Muslim home minister in 1989 – elected not from his home state but from Uttar Pradesh. Despite gaining praise for his reconciliation efforts, he faced criticism at home for his perceived closeness to New Delhi.

Sayeed started off as a young deputy minister in GM Sadiq’s government in 1967. When Delhi found Sadiq dispensable, he was quick to switch sides to Syed Mir Qasim and was made a cabinet minister.

He was made Congress leader in the legislative council from 1972 to 1975. He gathered many IOUs, made many friends and influenced many people. It was in 1977 that things began unravelling when he was the Pradesh Congress Committee chief.

In the 1977 elections, seen widely as the only fair elections in Kashmir, Sayeed lost from his hometown. He lost again in the 1983 elections and left Congress in 1987, hitching his star with VP Singh’s Jan Morcha.

Only after launching the PDP in 1999 and becoming the chief minister in 2002 did Sayeed leave a legacy for Kashmir to remember – largely because of Manmohan Singh (who invented the three-year rotational chief minister term).

With his daughter set to take the chief minister’s role, Sayeed’s maturity and sagacity in dealing with freedom fighters will be sorely missed.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 8^th, 2016.