Iltija Mufti

Some Lesser-Known Facts About Iltija Mufti

• Iltija Mufti was born into a prominent political family. Her grandfather, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, who died in 2016, was two-time Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir state (November 2002 to November 2005 and again from March 2015 to January 2016). He also served as the union minister for tourism in the Rajiv Gandhi Cabinet (1986-1987) and was also the Home Minister of India for a year (1989-1990).

  

• Her father, Javed Iqbal Shah, is a Kashmiri columnist, political analyst, businessman and animal rights activist. Javed was a paternal cousin of her mother, Mehbooba Mufti. Her parents got married in 1984 and parted their ways in 1987, a year later from the birth of Iltija.

  

• Iltija Mufti’s mother, Mehbooba Mufti, was a two-time Member of Parliament from Anantnag constituency from 2004 to 2009 and then from 2014 to 2018 while simultaneously serving as the CM of Jammu and Kashmir State.

• Ijtija Mufti did two years of her initial schooling from Kashmir and then moved to Delhi to pursue her remaining education.

• Iltija aspired to become an astronaut but ended up pursuing a Political Science course in a Delhi college. ^[5]Kashmiri Observer

• After completing her graduation from Delhi, she went to the UK to do a post-graduation in Masters of International Relations and then got a chance to work as a Senior Administrative Officer at the Indian High Commissioner in London. She also worked at Australia India Institute before coming back to her home in Kashmir.

• She came to political limelight after she first put out a tweet from her mother’s twitter handle on 18 September 2019, 46 days after political leaders and Kashmiri separatists along with her mother Mehbooba Mufti were detained under PSA.

• Since then, she has been vocal in her criticism of restrictions imposed in Kashmir and of several other governments’ decisions.

• After the abrogation of article 370, she wrote a letter to the Home Minister of India, Amit Shah, questioning him about the revocation of Article 370 from Kashmir. ^[6]First Post

• She went on to several talk shows, including a CNN show with Christiane Amanpour and BBC’s Hard Talk.

• Iltija Mufti moves under the security cover of J&K Police’s Special Security Group (SSG) provided by the Indian government.

• She was appointed as the Media Advisor to the President of the Jammu and Kashmir Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Mehbooba Mufti, on 30 August 2023. Iltija has been overseeing her mother, Mehbooba Mufti’s, social media account since she was detained in 2019 after the central government had ended Jammu and Kashmir’s special status under Article 370 and bifurcated the state into two Union Territories. ^[7]The Indian Express