Indian politician
Professor Saifuddin Soz (born 23 November 1937) is an Indian professor and seven term member of the Parliament of India. Soz hails from the Indian Union territory of Jammu and Kashmir.
He had been India's Minister of Water Resources in India's 14th Lok Sabha and Minister of Environment and Forests in the 1990s.
In January 2006, he was nominated to the Congress Working Committee, the executive committee of the Indian National Congress.[1]
Early life
Soz was born in Sopore, a township in the northern Kashmir Valley. He worked his way to completing a master's degree in economics from the University of Kashmir,[2] where he later held the position of registrar.[citation needed]
From there, Soz moved to the Jammu and Kashmir State Board of School Education (BOSE), a government department responsible for administration of schools. Soz sought voluntary retirement from government service to enter politics in 1983. At that time, he was Secretary of the BOSE.[citation needed]
Career
In 1983, Lok Sabha election, Soz contested and won the Baramulla seat as a candidate of the ruling Jammu and Kashmir National Conference party.
At the time, the Jammu and Kashmir National Conference was headed by Farooq Abdullah. Soz went on to win three more Lok Sabha elections as a member of the Jammu and Kashmir National Conference. He also represented the Jammu and Kashmir National Conference and the state of Jammu and Kashmir in the Rajya Sabha in the mid-'90s.
In 1997-98, he became India's Minister of Environment and Forests in the cabinet of Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral. Before that in 1996-97, Soz served in the same capacity under Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda.
In 1999, Soz was expelled from the Jammu and Kashmir National Conference party for voting against the government of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.[1] Soz was a Jammu and Kashmir National Conference member of parliament and defied his party's leadership. His sole vote toppled the National Democratic Alliance, which led the then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee to tender his resignation to then President of India K. R. Narayanan.
In 2003, Soz joined the Indian National Congress and was elected to the Rajya Sabha. In January 2006, he was inducted into the ministry of Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh as Minister of Water Resources,[3] a position he held until early 2009. Soz was appointed President of the Jammu and Kashmir Pradesh (state) Congress Committee in February 2008.[4]
Soz was one of the front runners for the post of Vice-President of India in the 2007 Vice-Presidential election.
WikiLeaks
A United States diplomatic cable leaked by the whistle blowing website WikiLeaks, claimed that Soz was facilitating a discreet dialogue between Indian government, and Kashmiri separatist leaders before 2006. The cable sent by then US Ambassador to India, David Mulford, to State Department in the United States, describes Soz as a long standing ‘contact’ of the (US) Embassy’s political section.
Bibliography
Soz has written and edited several books including:
- Kashmir Crisis (Soz, Saifuddin) (ed). 1993 [5]
- Why Autonomy to Kashmir (Soz, Saifuddin) (ed). 1995[6]
- Secularism - an Interpretation
- Daj (A play in Kashmiri on abuses of Dowry system)
- Kashmir- Glimpses of History and the Story of Struggle, His most comprehensive book on the history of the Kashmir Crisis and the Indo-Pak duopoly [7]
He also translated M. Illin's book 1,00,000 Whys from Russian to Kashmiri, an effort for which he received the Soviet Land Nehru Award.[2] He has written essays and short stories in Kashmiri, several articles in reputed newspapers and journals on a variety of subjects like Islam and modernism, rights of women, secularism, literature, education and economics. He is also the recipient of several literary awards including Soviet Land Nehru Award, All India Basic Literature Competition Award and Competition for Literature for Neo-Literates Award.[2]
References
