Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi

Some Lesser Known Facts About Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi

• Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi is one of the most senior and prominent leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He is the Muslim face of the party along with leaders like Shahnawaz Hussain and Najma Heptulla. He is currently serving as the Minister of Minority Affairs in the Narendra Modi Government.

• He was interested in politics from an early age. He joined the Janata Party while he was in college and took part in many political campaigns during the Emergency period; as a consequence, he was jailed in the Naini Central Jail at the age of 17.

• He swiftly climbed the political ladder after joining the Janata Party and became the Allahabad District Vice President and the General Secretary of Yuva Janta (Youth wing of the Janata Party) during 1978-1979.

• After joining the BJP in 1986, he got appointed as the National Vice-President of the Bharatiya Janta Yuva Morcha (Youth Wing of BJP) in 1992, and the National General Secretary of the BJP and Spokesperson of many states from 2000 to 2002.

• He got married to Seema Naqvi in 1983 after going through a lot of hurdles; as Seema belongs to a Hindu household, Naqvi had to convince both their families for the marriage.

  

• When he got elected to the Lok Sabha from the Rampur seat, he became the first Muslim ever to win from that constituency, this helped him in being recognized as the Leading Muslim face for the party. In the same year, he got the post of the Minister of State (MoS) in the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting by Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

• He visited the U.A.E. as the Head of the Joint Parliamentary Delegation in 1999.

  

• He was in charge of the Central Election Management and Co-ordination Committee of the BJP from 2002-2006 and from 2006 onwards, he assumed the role of the National Vice-President of the BJP.

  

• He has also played crucial roles as a member of many committees including the Haj Operations Committee and the Defence Committee.

• His sister, Farhat Naqvi, is a social activist who runs an apolitical voluntary organization named Mera Haq; working for the welfare of the victims of Triple Talaq and Domestic Abuse. She herself has been a victim of this when her husband left her in 2006 for giving birth to a girl child.

  

• In November 2014, he was inducted into the Narendra Modi’s Government as the Union Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs and Minority Affairs.