Srinagar, July 14: Senior National Conference (NC) leader and former minister Mustafa Kamal passed away on Tuesday after a prolonged illness. He was 83.
He breathed his last at a private hospital in Srinagar, family sources said. The deceased will be laid to rest at Bominsar graveyard in Sonwar Srinagar.
A medical doctor by training, Sheikh Mustafa Kamal was the younger son of NC founder Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah and Begum Akbar Jehan Abdullah. He was the younger brother of NC president and former chief minister Dr Farooq Abdullah and the uncle of incumbent Chief Minister Omar Abdullah.
Although trained in medicine, Kamal devoted most of his professional life to politics. He entered the National Conference in the early 1980s and became a member of the Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Council in 1983. Four years later, he was elected to the Legislative Assembly from the Gulmarg constituency, which he represented until 2002.
During his political career, he served as a Cabinet minister in successive National Conference governments formed in 1983, 1987 and 1996, holding key portfolios in the state administration. He also emerged as one of the party's principal organisational leaders and, in later years, served as the Additional General Secretary of the National Conference, remaining active in party affairs even after leaving electoral politics.
Known for his unwavering loyalty to the National Conference, Kamal was among the party's most vocal spokespersons on issues relating to Jammu and Kashmir. He frequently articulated the party's position during periods of intense political change.
Sheikh Mustafa Kamal is survived by his family and leaves behind a political legacy spanning more than four decades. As a physician-turned-politician, Cabinet minister and one of the National Conference's senior-most organisational leaders, he remained a familiar figure in Jammu and Kashmir's public life.
