7 Facts about Syed Ali Shah Geelani you may not know.

Syed Ali Shah Geelani is a separatist Hurriyat leader from Jammu and Kashmir. He was previously a member of Jamaat-e-Islami Kashmir but later on founded his own party by the name of Tehreek-e-Hurriyat. He has served as the chairman of All Parties Hurriyat Conference, a conglomerate of separatist parties in Jammu and Kashmir. He was an MLA from the Sopore constituency of Jammu and Kashmir three times(1972,1977,1987). Masarat Alam is expected to be the successor to Geelani.
1. Syed Ali Shah Geelani Birth date : (Urdu: سید علی شاہ گیلانی‎) : Born on  29 September 1929 he is a separatist Hurriyat leader from Jammu and Kashmir. He was previously a member of Jamaat-e-Islami Kashmir but later on founded his own party by the name of Tehreek-e-Hurriyat.

2. SAS Geelani has done his education from Pakistan. Geelani born in a town near Bandipora, North Kashmir, on 29 September 1929. He was educated at Sopore, and finished his studies at the Oriental College, Lahore (in present-day Pakistan)

3. He has been four times Chairmain of Hurriyat (G). In October 2013 he was reelected to a fourth three-year term as chairman of Hurriyat Conference (G), a faction of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, which split up in 2003. He founded the Tehreek-e-Hurriyat party, to which he was separately reelected as chairman for a three-year term in September 2013.

4. He has faced Sedition with Arunduti Roy and four Others: On November 29, 2010 Geelani, along with writer Arundhati Roy, Maoist Varavara Rao and three others, was charged under “sections 124A (sedition), 153A (promoting enmity between classes), 153B (imputations, assertions prejudicial to national integration), 504 (insult intended to provoke breach of peace) and 505 (false statement, rumour circulated with intent to cause mutiny or offence against public peace… to be read with Section 13 of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act of 1967” The charges, which carried a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, were the result of a seminar they gave in New Delhi titled “Azadi-the Only Way” on October 21, at which Geelani was heckled.



5. His grandson crew member in Indian private airliner: Both his elder son Nayeem and his daughter in law are doctors in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. His second son, Zahoor, lives in New Delhi. Izhaar, his grandson, is a crew member of a private airliner in India, while his daughter Farhat is a teacher in Jeddah.

6. Geelani’s passport was seized in 1981: He has been denied many times to go out of Country. With the exception of his Hajj pilgrimage in 2006, he has not been allowed to leave India. In May 2015, Geelani applied for passport to visit his daughter in Saudi Arabia. The Indian government delayed it citing technical reasons, including the fact he did not fill in the “nationality” column in his application. On 21 July, the Government granted him a passport on humanitarian grounds with a validity of nine months

7. Death Rumor of SAS Geelani. : On March 12, 2014, rumors of Geelani’s death, spread by edits to his Wikipedia entry, “a particular Hindi news channel”, and pages on Facebook led the government of Kashmir to suspend internet and phone service, according to some sources. The cuts in Internet service, hours after a statement by Hurriyat that Geelani would be flown to New Delhi for medical treatment, were blamed for spreading the rumors.
Least but not last Hurriyat Conference (G) on few days ago accepted Syed Ali Geelani as “lifetime chairman”. “The members in the meeting said that most of the pro-freedom leaders and parties of Jammu & Kashmir have assembled under the banner of Hurriyat Conference and seeing the unshakable, steadfast, uncompromised and active leadership of Syed Ali Geelani, the Hurriyat conference had accepted him as its lifetime Chairman.

Composed by : Mohammad Munawar Khan
Source : INTERNET