J&K polls: Iltija Mufti to join fray after mother decides not to contest
Srinagar: As former chief minister Mehbooba Mufti is reported to be adamant not to contest an Assembly election as long as Jammu and Kashmir remains a Union Territory, her daughter Iltija Mufti has been chosen to join the fray from a constituency which is regarded as fully secure.
She will be contesting as the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) candidate from the Mufti’s home constituency Bijbehara in southern Anantnag district. Her mother was elected to the Assembly of the erstwhile state of J&K for the first time from Bijbehara in 1996 on an Indian National Congress ticket.
36-year-old Ms. Iltija had vigorously campaigned for her mother in the recent Lok Sabha elections in Anantnag. Though Ms. Mufti lost this election to former minister and National Conference (NC) veteran Mian Altaf Ahmed, it provided her daughter with a massive opportunity to reach out to the masses in the constituency.
Apart from making an aggressive bid for her party candidates, especially her mother, by holding dozens of roadshows and rallies and canvassing door-to-door in Anantnag-Rajouri and Srinagar constituencies, Ms. Iltija remained active on social media platforms to make the political voice of PDP and its leader more popular and reach out to as many netizens particularly the young as possible with her own opinions often seen as being hard-hitting.
Ms. Iltija who is also media advisor to her mother and PDP president is part of a new generation of leaders which is trying to shape up politics in J&K. She, by any yardstick, is making her mark. She became fiercely “protective on social media after J&K was stripped of its special status and split up into two Union territories in August 2019. She has also been in-charge of her mother’s social media accounts since 2019. Her own ‘X’ profile mentions her as a ‘Kashmiri’. Over the past one year, she has been busy also with writing the biography of her mother which would shed light on her political journey and its significance in Kashmiri politics.
The party sources said that former ministers and senior party leaders Abdur Rehman Veeri, Abdul Gaffar Sofi, Dr. Mehboob Beg, and Sartaj Madani too have been chosen as PDP candidates to contest on various seats in south Kashmir.