Shah Faesal (IAS)

Some Lesser Known Facts About Shah Faesal

• Shah Faesal has been an Indian Civil Servant from Jammu & Kashmir who is best known as the first Kashmiri Muslim to top the UPSC Examination in 2009.

  

• Dr. Shah Faesal belongs to Sheikh Nar Village, a remote village in Kupwara district of J&K.

• He grew up watching the bloodshed in Kashmir, which also took his father’s life who was killed by some unidentified militants in 2002; at that time, Shah Faesal was just 19-year-old.

• In an interview, Shah Faesal’s mother said that her husband was killed because he refused shelter to militants.

• He did his schooling in the vernacular language, i.e., Urdu, from a government school in Kupwara.

• It was his father who taught him English and Mathematics in his school.

• His family moved from Kupwara to Srinagar; after his father’s killing.

• After his schooling, Shah Faesal went for his MBBS from Srinagar’s Sher-i-Kashmir Medical College.

  

• After completing his MBBS, Dr. Shah Faesal became an RTI activist in Srinagar, and soon, he became a popular RTI activist in the area.

• It was during his RTI activism that he had realised to serve the country at a larger scale and decided to prepare for the Civil Services.

• During an interview, Dr. Faesal revealed that he was inspired by Abdul Gani Mir, a 1994 Batch IPS Officer from Kupwara. Dr. Shah Faesal has been in touch with him since 2007.

  

• Dr. Faesal was so confident of his success that he had decided to give just one attempt to the UPSC Examination, and that too, only after preparing in just one month; without the aid of any coaching centre.

• He also decided not to go to Delhi for his UPSC preparation; rather, he decided to prepare for the examination by staying in Srinagar.
  

• When Shah Faesal had emerged as the topper of the UPSC Examination; held in 2009, he became the poster boy of UPSC in Kashmir.

  

• After becoming a UPSC Topper, Dr. Faesal became a role model to the UPSC aspirants across India. He also started delivering motivational lectures to the UPSC aspirants.

• He was also the Deputy Commissioner at Bandipora District of Kashmir Valley.

• On 9 January 2019, 35-year-old Shah Faesal resigned from the Indian Administrative Service. On his Facebook account, he posted that his decision was-
  

  “to protest against the unabated killings in Kashmir, and lack of any sincere reach out from the Union government.”

  

• Dr Faesal went on to launch a scathing attack on the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government at the Centre, saying-
  

  “subversion of public institutions like the Reserve Bank of India, the Central Bureau of Investigation and the National Investigation Agency has the potential to decimate the constitutional edifice of this country and it needs to be stopped.”

• On 17 March 209, he launched his own political party- Jammu and Kashmir People’s Movement (JKPM) in Srinagar. Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) students’ leader Shehla Rashid also joined Faesal’s party.

• After the removal of special status to Jammu and Kashmir, provided under Article 370, he was detained under the Public Safety Act (PSA) in Srinagar when he was stopped from taking a flight to Istanbul at the Delhi airport during the intervening night of August 13 and August 14 and was flown back to Srinagar.

• In April 2022, the centre government reinstated him in service after three years of his resignation. Since he gave up politics, he had been dropping hints of his willingness to rejoin the service. ^[1]The Tribune In September 2022, he was posted to the Union Culture Ministry. ^[2]The Hindu