Saifuddin Soz


Professor Saifuddin Soz is an Indian professor and former 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.

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, where he later held the position of registrar.
From there, Soz moved to the Jammu and Kashmir State Board of School Education, 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.

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. 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, a position he held until early 2009. Soz was appointed President of the Jammu and Kashmir Pradesh Congress Committee in February 2008.

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 Embassy’s political section.

House Arrest

Soz faced significant controversy in 2019–2020 when he was allegedly placed under house arrest following the abrogation of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir. His wife, filed a habeas corpus petition in the Supreme Court through Abhishek Manu Singhvi, claiming his detention was unconstitutional. The Jammu and Kashmir administration denied detaining him, stating he was free to move with security clearance, but Soz and opposition leaders, contested this, alleging he was restricted. The Supreme Court closed the case after accepting the administration’s affidavit, though Soz maintained he remained under de facto detention and was released after a period of one year.