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Hours after taking oath as the Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir on Wednesday, Omar Abdullah, National Conference (NC) vice-president, named his close lieutenant Nasir Aslam Wani as his advisor.
An order issued by the J&K government’s General Administration Department (GAD) said Wani has been appointed as an advisor to the CM.
A senior NC leader, Wani, 58, hails from the Sogam village in Kupwara. He belongs to a political family. His grandfather G N Sogami won the Lolab Assembly seat in 1962 and 1967 and was a minister in the Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad Cabinet in the 1960s.
A business graduate, Wani joined politics in 1998, starting his stint with the NC’s youth wing. He made his debut in electoral politics for the first time in 2008 and won as an NC canddate from Srinagar’s Amirakadal seat that has been now renamed Channapora.
Wani was inducted into his Council of Ministers by Omar Abdullah during his first tenure as the CM between 2009 and 2014. He was initially given various portfolios as the Minister of State (MoS) including Tourism, Culture, Housing and Urban development, Public Health Engineering and Revenue and Relief.
Three years later, he was also given the charge of MoS Home following which he directly worked with Omar, who was handling the Home department.
In the 2014 Assembly polls, Wani lost to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)’s Altaf Bukhari from the Amirakadal seat. Despite his defeat, Wani’s stature in the NC has been on the rise. In 2014, he was elected as the NC’s provincial president for Kashmir Valley, a post he continues to hold in the party.
In 2022, the NC appointed as him the constituency in-charge for the Kupwara Assembly seat.
In the recent Assembly elections, Wani contested from the Kupwara seat, returning to his home town. He lost to the PDP’s Fayaz Ahmad Mir by around 10,000 votes.
An NC leader said Nasir “had a lot experience” with the party affairs and structure, which would help him in his advisor’s role.
“He (Wani) has been the provincial president for a decade now. He took the post when the party was at its lowest. We had just 15 seats in Assembly then,” the NC leader said.
The leader also claimed, “His (Wani’s) leadership has helped the party grow to a position where we have secured a majority on our own. It shows his exceptional qualities”.
