Mehbooba Mufti re-elected PDP president

SRINAGAR: Jammu and Kashmir's Opposition PDP today re-elected incumbent party chief Mehbooba Mufti as its president for the fourth time after she won the elections unopposed.

52-year-old Mehbooba, a law graduate from the University of Kashmir, joined politics in 1996 when she was elected from Bijbehara Assembly seat on Congress ticket.

She subsequently broke away from Congress and contested the 1999 Lok Sabha elections as a PDP candidate from Srinagar but lost to sitting NC member Omar Abdullah.

In 2002, she won the Pahalgam Assembly seat in south Kashmir and was elected as PDP president for the first time in 2003 and has been holding the post since then. She became a member of the Lok Sabha in 2004 from Anantnag seat.

PDP spokesman Nayeem Akhtar welcomed Mehbooba's re-election and said that during her tenure, she would work towards strengthening the democratic process in the state.

He also welcomed the Supreme Court notice to the Union government seeking response on a plea for CBI probe into the mysterious death of National Conference leader Mohammad Yusuf.