Mushtaq Ahmad Shah Bukhari, a former minister and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate from Surankote, passed away on Wednesday morning at his home in the Poonch district of Jammu and Kashmir. The 75-year-old politician, who had been experiencing health issues for some time, succumbed to a heart attack at 7 am. He is survived by his wife, two daughters, and a son. Bukhari had represented Surankote as a Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for two terms and had recently affiliated himself with the BJP in February 2023, following the central government’s decision to confer Scheduled Tribe status upon the Pahari community, to which he belonged.
He was later selected as the BJP candidate for the Surankote constituency, which took part in the second phase of elections on September 25. Before aligning with the BJP, Bukhari had a longstanding association with the National Conference, spanning four decades. Nevertheless, he chose to leave the party in February 2022 following a disagreement with party president Farooq Abdullah regarding the issue of Scheduled Tribe status. The announcement of Bukhari’s passing elicited expressions of sympathy from numerous political figures, including Ravinder Raina, the president of the Jammu and Kashmir BJP, who referred to him as “a mass leader” and remarked that his death has created “a void which is very hard to fill.”