Forced to drop Hurriyat Chief tag on X: Mirwaiz Umar Farooq

Prominent Hurriyat leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq removed the ‘Chairman, All Parties Hurriyat Conference’ designation from his verified account on X, but said the move was a “Hobson’s choice” made under pressure from the authorities.

“For some time now, I was being pressed by the authorities to make changes to my X (formerly Twitter) handle as Hurriyat chairman, as all constituents of Hurriyat Conference, including the Awami Action Committee that I head have been banned under the UAPA, making Hurriyat a banned organisation, failing which they will take down my handle,” Mirwaiz posted on the microblogging platform on Friday morning, after making the changes on Thursday night.

Later in the day, he was not allowed to address the Friday congregation at historic Jama Masjid.


Mirwaiz led a faction of Hurriyat Conference, known for their engagement with different governments in New Delhi including those led by BJP’s Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Congress’ Manmohan Singh.

“At a time when public space and avenues of communication stand severely restricted, this platform remains among the very few means available to me to reach out to my people and share my views on our issues with them, and the outside world. Under such circumstances, it is a Hobson’s choice I was left to make,” Mirwaiz said on X.

The screen shot of his changed profile went viral on social media in Kashmir. This triggered a string of comments from netizens on social media, with some terming it "a pragmatic decision in current circumstances" while others saw it as "scaling down and compromise from the politics Hurriyat espoused."

Political parties in the mainstream camp including the ruling National Conference and opposition People's Democratic Party came out in support of Mirwaiz, and a few criticized him.

“If Mirwaiz of Kashmir has removed the APHC tag as an act of peace, it must never be weaponised against him. Choosing peace over rigidity is not weakness; it is leadership,” Waheed Para, PDP legislator from Pulwama, wrote on X.

He said Mirwaiz acted within the framework of law and circumstances. “Those attacking and trolling him for this decision are deliberately trying to undermine him, making his path harder despite the extraordinary challenges he has endured and the supreme sacrifice of his father. Such attacks do not serve justice,” Para said.

Tanvir Sadiq, NC legislator from Zadibal constituency of Srinagar, said Mirwaiz is a scholar respected across the country who has raised pro-people issues over the past few years. “If he has said that he is being pressurised, we need to revisit that. I request GoI and concerned people that this should be relooked into," he told reporters here.

Opposition legislator Sajad Lone, who heads People's Conference, in an oblique reference to Mirwaiz's decision, termed it as "a surrender in lieu of protocol and CRPF security."

APHC is a collective of political organisations formed in 1993 at the peak of militancy in Kashmir, to press for the resolution of the Kashmir issue. At the time of inception, seven parties were part of its executive council and 16 parties were part of the general body.

Mirwaiz was announced as its first chairman, despite being the youngest–around 20 years old–and inexperienced among all the representatives. A decade later, when APHC was divided into two factions over ideological and political differences, the faction led by Mirwaiz engaged in a dialogue process with both the NDA government and the UPA governments in New Delhi.

The other faction was led by Syed Ali Shah Geelani, who passed away in September 2021, at the age of 92, while he was under house arrest.

Majority of the Hurriyat leaders, since its formation and some even before that, were intermittently jailed and released on bail in connection with the cases registered against them.

The NDA government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in the run-up to the abrogation of Article 370 and 35 (A) and downgrading the erstwhile state of J&K into the union territories of J&K and Ladakh in 2019, acted against all factions and parties of APHC.

Several active Hurriyat leaders including Muhammad Ashraf Sehrai, Shabir Shah, Nayeem Khan, Yasin Malik, Masrat Alam, Mehrajdin Kalwal, Shahid ul Islam and Altaf Shah, and hundreds of activists were jailed in different cases over the years.

Sehrai and Altaf died in jail, while most others continue to remain in incarceration. Some, like Professor Abdul Gani Bhat and Moulvi Abbas Ansari, died of natural causes.

Mirwaiz was put under house arrest for over four years. Simultaneously, the home affairs ministry started banning organisations from both the factions of Hurriyat Conference under Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. Some of the organisations have been banned for the second consecutive term of five years.