New Delhi: Congress Legislature Party (CLP) leader in the Jammu and Kashmir assembly Ghulam Ahmad Mir is a trusted lieutenant of the Gandhi family.
Mir had for years worked closely with both Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi in Rae Bareli and Amethi Lok Sabha constituencies. In fact, he along with Amethi Lok Sabha MP Kishori Lal Sharma were the representatives of the Gandhis in the two constituencies.
Mir, a Congress Working Committee (CWC) member and a three-time legislator, is also holding the post of the party general secretary in-charge of West Bengal and Jharkhand.
With a tenure of around eight years from 2015 to 2022, Mir, 64, was one of the longest-serving Congress presidents in Jammu and Kashmir.
A former minister, Mir was considered a staunch rival of ex-Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Ghulam Nabi Azad. It is said that due to his closeness with the Gandhi family, Mir posed a strong challenge to Azad’s authority and political clout within the Congress and in the erstwhile state.
Political observers blame Azad for Mir’s arrest in the alleged sex racket that rocked Kashmir in 2006. Azad had promptly handed over the case to the CBI to finish his bete noire’s political career.
However, a special CBI court in September 2012 acquitted Mir and others in the case.
The Gandhi family had throughout the case stood firmly behind Mir and called him a victim of political conspiracy. They believed that Mir’s name was deliberately included in the case in a bid to finish him politically.
The Congress leadership fielded him from Dooru in the 2008 assembly elections despite opposition from a section, led by Azad, arguing that he was yet to be acquitted by the court. Mir won comprehensively from the constituency and soon after his acquittal, he was inducted in the National Conference-Congress coalition government in 2013.
He had earlier won the 2002 assembly elections from Dooru.
It is said that whenever the Congress leadership decides to join the Omar Abdullah-led government in Jammu and Kashmir, Mir will be inducted as the grand old party’s representative in the cabinet.
