Officials said here that Farooq Khan, advisor to Jammu and Kashmir Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha, submitted his resignation on Sunday evening and was set to be given an “important assignment” in the BJP ahead of the first assembly elections in the union territory. A retired IPS officer who was instrumental in breaking the backbone of militancy in Jammu and Kashmir in the early 1990s, Khan had previously served as the BJP’s national secretary and held various positions in the party’s minority cell Was.
The 67-year-old may be entrusted with the responsibility of preparing the party for the first assembly elections in the Union Territory. Though the election schedule has not been announced yet, officials expect the elections to be held after October after the completion of the ongoing delimitation exercise by May.
The erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir was divided into union territories and its special status under Article 370 of the Constitution was revoked in August 2019. In July 2019, Khan was appointed as an advisor to the then Lieutenant Governor Satya Pal Malik.
Earlier he was the administrator of Lakshadweep. Khan began his career as a sub-inspector of police in Jammu and Kashmir in 1984 and became an Inspector General of Police. He was promoted to the Indian Police Service (IPS) in 1994.
He came into limelight when he volunteered to lead a Special Task Force (STF) of the police in 1994, when the morale of the force was low and security related operations were being carried out by the Army and BSF. The STF was set up with personnel from the J&K Police and acted as a crack team in counter-insurgency operations. Hailing from Poonch in Jammu, Khan was the Deputy Inspector General of Jammu region and led the teams to end the siege by terrorists at the famous Raghunath temple in 2003.
After his retirement in 2013 as an IGP and head of the Sher-e-Kashmir Police Academy in Udhampur, Khan joined the BJP in 2014 in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Recipient of the President’s Police Medal for Meritorious Service and several accolades from the Army and other security agencies, Khan’s entry into the BJP was seen as a move to woo Muslim voters in Poonch and Rajouri regions.
His grandfather, Colonel (Retd) Pir Mohammad Khan, who was in the army of Maharaja Hari Singh, was the first state president of the J&K Jana Sangh.
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