Chief Minister, Ms Mehbooba Mufti today took oath as a member of 12th Legislative Assembly of Jammu and Kashmir.Speaker, Mr Kavinder Gupta administered the oath of office to Ms Mehbooba in the former’s chamber in Assembly secretariat here.Minister for Parliamentary Affairs, Mr Abdul Rehman Veeri, Minister for Law, Abdul Haq Khan, other members of the Council of Ministers, Deputy Speaker, Mr Nazir Gurezi, Legislators, Law Secretary, Secretary Legislative Assembly and PDP General Secretary, Mohammad Sartaj Madni were present on the occasion.The Ministers and Legislators felicitated the Chief Minister on being formally administered the oath of office as a member of the State Legislative Assembly.Pertinently, Ms Mehbooba was elected to the State Assembly for the fourth time on 25 June 2016 with an impressive margin of more than 12000 votes.Ms Mehbooba polled 17698 votes while her nearest rival, Hilal Ahmad Shah of the Congress got 5615 votes in the by-poll for Anantnag constituency which went to polls on 22 June 2016. The prestigious constituency was earlier represented by her father Mufti Mohammad Sayeed for two consecutive terms.The by-poll to Anantnag assembly segment had to be called following the demise of Mufti Mohammad Sayeed on January 7 this year.
Ms Mehbooba is a politician by choice who responded to a political situation when Jammu and Kashmir was in the grip of a gloomy scenario of violence and its tragic fallout as the State was reeling under extremely adverse conditions on politico-economic fronts.Ms Mehbooba contested and won her maiden assembly election in 1996 from the home constituency of Bijbehara in district Anantnag on a Congress ticket. She resigned her assembly seat in 1999 in run up to the formation of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) with her father Mufti Mohammad Sayeed and his colleagues.She continued her winning spree by successfully contesting the Assembly elections from Pahalgam constituency of district Anantnag as a PDP candidate in 2002, the Lok Sabha elections from Anantnag-Pulwama Parliamentary constituency in 2004, Assembly elections from Wachi constituency of district Shopian in 2008 and Lok Sabha elections from Anantnag-Pulwama parliamentary segment in May 2014.Ms Mehbooba has emerged as a dominant force in J&K politics and was sworn in as the first woman Chief Minister of the State on 4 April 2016. Her rise in the politics of the State has signaled a new era in gender equality and empowerment in a society that is by and large still rooted in traditions. With just a couple of months in the office, Ms Mehbooba has already initiated a promising era of sensitive and honest governance in Jammu and Kashmir and has emerged as an icon of women empowerment in the State.