rki.news

Altaf Hamid Rao.

MIRPUR ( AJK): January  31:  Veteran Kashmiri leader and Azad Jammu and Kashmir state President Barrister Sultan Mehmood Chaudhry died in an Islamabad hospital on Saturday, He was 73, family and official sources confirmed.

According to the statement, Chaudhry breathed his last in Islamabad. His funeral prayers will be offered on Sunday first at 4.00 pm at Quaid-e-Azam MuhammadAliJinnahCricket Stadium in MirpurAJK (tomorrow)  Sunday and then at his native village of Chechian, Mirpur, Azad Jammu Kashmir.  .

BBorn in  1953, in Chechian, Mirpur, Sultan Mahmood Chaudhry received his early education in his hometown, completed matriculation in Rawalpindi and graduated from Gordon College.

He later earned a Bar-at-Law degree from the United Kingdom.

After returning to Pakistan in 1983, he entered active politics and went on to play a central role in Azad Kashmir’s political landscape for decades.

He also served as Prime Minister of Azad Jammu and Kashmir as well as Leader of the Opposition, and was elected nine times as a member of the Azad Kashmir Legislative Assembly from Mirpur.

Over his long political career, he remained affiliated with several major political parties, including the Azad Jammu and Kashmir Muslim Conference, the Pakistan Peoples Party and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Azad Kammu  Kashmir.

He was elected President of Azad Jammu and Kashmir in 2021.

Chaudhry was widely known for forcefully raising the Kashmir issue at international forums.

He raised  the Kashmiri case staging rallies and demonstrations in front of  the United Nations, European Union and various institutions in the United States, and led large-scale Kashmir marches in London, New York, Brussels, Dublin and Berlin.