Mirza Mehboob Beg

Mirza Mehboob Beg is the senior Jammu and Kashmir Peoples Democratic Party (JKPDP) leader and a former Cabinet minister in the Jammu and Kashmir government. Beg won the Anantnag Assembly constituency for the first time in the 1983 Jammu and Kashmir Elections as a Jammu and Kashmir National Conference (JKNC) nominee. He defeated Congress candidate Ghulam Hassan Naik by 5,612 votes and became the Cabinet Minister for Health, Family Welfare and Medical Education. Beg as a Congress candidate lost to JKNC candidate Safdar Ali Beg and stood at the third spot in the 1996 Assembly polls. In the 2002 Jammu and Kashmir Assembly Elections, Beg won the Anantnag seat once again as a JKNC candidate by defeating Jammu and Kashmir Awami League's (JKAL) Liyakat Ali Khan with a margin of 2,861 votes. In the 2008 polls, Beg was defeated by JKPDP's Mufti Mohammad Sayeed by 4,891 votes. Beg also contested Lok Sabha polls several times from the Anantnag parliamentary constituency. In the 2004 polls, he was defeated by Mehbooba Mufti with a margin of 38,938 votes. He won the 2009 Lok Sabha polls with a margin of 5,224 votes against JKPDP's Peer Mohd Hussain. However, Beg was again defeated by Mehbooba in the 2014 polls with a margin of 65,417 votes. The JKPDP leader is again contesting from Anantnag in the 2024 Jammu and Kashmir Assembly Elections against Congress candidate Peerzada Mohammad Syed, Syed Peerzada Wajahat Hussain of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Mir Altaf Hussain of the Democratic Progressive Azad Party (DPAP), and Hilal Ahmad Shah of the Jammu and Kashmir Apni Party (JKAP).