Born in Baba Mohalla, Bijbehara town of district Islamabad on 12th January 1936.
In 1960, Mufti Sayeed became district convenor of the Democratic National Conference, or DNC.
Mufti Mohammad Sayeed was elected to the Assembly from Bijbehara in 1962, and retained the seat in 1967. As a result, he was appointed a Deputy Minister by G.M. Sadiq.
In 1972 the late leader became a minister in the Cabinet, headed by Syed Mir Qasim and was also elected the party’s leader in the Legislative Council.
In 1975, he was made the leader of the Congress Legislature Party and Jammu & Kashmir Pradesh Congress President. He continued to hold the post of PCC Chief in J&K for over a decade
In 1986, he was appointed as Union Tourism Minister in the Government headed by the then Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi.
Mufti Mohammad Sayeed resigned from the Union Government and the Congress following Rajiv-Farooq Accord of 1987.
He later joined the Jan Morcha, led by V. P. Singh and was appointed Union Home Minister in 1989, after having won the Lok Sabha elections of that year as Jan Morcha candidate from Muzaffarnagar, in Uttar Pradesh.
Mufti Mohammad Sayeed returned to J&K politics after having rejoined the Congress in 1996. He won the Islamabad Lok Sabha seat in 1998, but soon resigned from both his positions and the Congress party to form a new regional political party – the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
After remaining in the Congress for better part of his life, Mufti along with some likeminded associates and Mehbooba Mufti, his daughter, founded the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in 1999 and led the first PDP-Congress coalition government in the State from 2002 to 2005.
In 2002, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed became the Chief Minister of Jammu & Kashmir for the first time. His party PDP won 16 seats and formed an alliance with Congress to assume power from October 2002 to November 2005.
The Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus service was officially flagged-off by the Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh on April 7, 2005 when Mufti Sayeed was J&K’s Chief Minister.
It was summer of 2008 that Kashmir rose against an order transferring eco-fragile land to Amarnath Shrine Board. Sensing trouble, PDP withdrew support to its ally Congress bringing down Ghulam Nabi Azad led coalition government.
It took two months to Mufti Sayeed to finally take oath of office and secrecy as CM by cobbling up an ‘alliance of governance’ with right wing Hindu nationalist Bhartiya Janata Party. The swearing-in-ceremony was attended by PM Narendra Modi in Jammu on March Ist 2015.
Jan 7, 2016: 14 days after he was admitted in AIIMS, New Delhi, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed breathed his last at 7:30 AM. It was multiple organ failure that doctors declared him dead. After PM Narendra Modi paid him floweral tributes at Palam Airport New Delhi, his body was flown in C1 30 IAF plane. Besides family including daughter Mehbooba, the body was accompanied by Union HM Rajnath Singh, former CMs Ghulam Nabi Azad and Omar Abdullah.
