Ghulam Nabi Azad

Ghulam Nabi Azad Biography

Ghulam Nabi Azad is a veteran and senior politician and congress leader from Kashmir. He served as the Chief Minister of Jammu & Kashmir during the period, 2 November 2005 – 11 July 2008, in association with PDP. It was the return of Congress after a hiatus of 30 years. Presently he serves as the Leader of opposition in Rajya Sabha. One of the prominent politicians of the state, earlier he has also served as Minister of Health and Family Welfare during the tenure of Manmohan Singh and also  AICC general secretary for a record nine times and a member of Congress Working Committee for long 18 years, indeed a great record. He successfully led the party in the state assembly elections in 2002 and is often considered as the ‘crisis manager’ of the party.

He was born in Soti, Doda district in the year 1949. He attended school at his ancestral village and completed college education at Baderwah town. He joined the National Cadet Corps as a student. 1972, he completed his master’s degree in Zoology. He is married to Shameem Dev Azad, a famous Kashmiri singer since 1980 and the couple has two children. He entered politics at the age of 24 soon after his college, when he was appointed as the Block Secretary of Congress Committee. In 1975 he was nominated as the President of J&K Youth Congress and finally was appointed in 1980. Same year he got married and was also elected to Lok Sabha from Washim.

In 1984, he briefly served as Union Minister of Parliamentary affairs. Since then he has decorated almost all top positions of congress party within the state and finally became Parliamentary Affairs Minister under Manmohan Singh till 2005. He was elected as the chief minister of Jammu & Kashmir for the first time in 2005 and in 2009 was appointed as Health and Family Welfare Minister. National AIDS Control Programme (NACP) and expansion of National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) are among his achievements as a minister.

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Updated: November 29, 2015