Mushtaq Pahalgami

Mushtaq Ahmad Magray 'Pahalgami' (مشتاق احمد ماگرے (پہلگامی (born 1981, Pahalgam, District Anantnag, India), President, Himalayan Welfare Organization, Pahalgam is an award-winning social activist and environmentalist, working on social issues concerning Education, Public Healthcare Environment and Right to Information.

Mushtaq Pahalgami has worked closely with many other environmental and social activists in the region, including environment and human rights lawyer Parvez Imroz and has represented the region's concerns in various national and international seminars and conferences. Pahalgami is founder and president of the NGO Himalayan Welfare Organization, Pahalgam (HWO), committed to service in the areas of health care, environmental protection and conservation, tourism, education, poverty reduction and alleviation human rights, Women Rights and preservation of the famous Kolahoi Glacier, Lidder and Sind Rivers.

Pahalgami also works with trade unions and social organizations like the Pahalgam Collation of Unions, Pahalgam Hotel/Guest House Owners Union, Pahalgam Travel and Tour Operators Union, Pahalgam Tent Union, and Pahalgam Peoples Welfare Organization. He and his team at HWO are known in the region for organizing free medical camps, Environment Preservation and Awareness Programmes, Seminars and Symposiums about the right to Information Public Education and Health Care, and Drug-deaddiction apart from ongoing flood relief operations after the September, 2014 floods in the valley.

Mushtaq has also campaigned for environmental conservation and preservation in the Himalayan region, particularly in and around Pahalgam, compelling exploitative forest, timber and land interests to retreat from most parts of the region through a long and sustained legal battle, media campaign and RTI crusade against dereliction of environmental duty by government departments, illegal occupation of forest land, hunting of wild animals, felling of trees and smuggling of timber. HWO has also organised over 30 camps and information campaigns to promote and ensure conservation of the natural ecosystems of the Lidder and Sind rivers as well as the Kolhoi Glacier.

Mushtaq's organization, Himalayan Welfare, organized a monthlong free medical and information camp for pilgrims and tourists at Nunwanan, Pahalgam, starting on 6 July 2015, a one-day seminar on 'Environmental Conservation and Sustainable Development' on the 06th of June,2015 a seminar on 'Women and Education in J&K' on the 28th of March, 2015 and a poster-campaign on 'Wetlands Awareness' on 2 February 2015, a day-long environment and sanitation Awareness Camp at Pahalgam on World Environment Day, 5 June 2014 at Pahalgam, with the support of Pahalgam Development Authority, Pahalgam, Municipal Committee Pahalgam, and Pahalgam Travel Tour Operators Union. HWO celebrates the World Environment Day every year on the fifth of June, acknowledging an urgent need to raise global awareness about the need to take positive environmental action. The Himalayan Welfare Organization organized a one-day national seminar on the theme 'Environmental Conservation and Sustainable Development' on the 4th of June, 2016 inviting, Scholars, Environmentalists, local political representatives, media persons and other civil society activists, in which the 'Save Shakul' Campaign was also launched. Those who spoke at the seminar included Mushtaq Pahalgami (President, HWO), MLA, Pahalgam, Altaf Kuloo, MLC Syed Bashir Ahmad Veeri, MLA, Shangus, Gulzar Ahmad Wani, Prof. Nyla Ali Khan, University of Oklahoma, Dr Shirin Akhter, Zakir Husain Delhi College, University of Delhi, Ms Richa Chintan, Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability, Ms. Simin Akhter Naqvi, Zakir Husain Delhi College, University of Delhi, Dr Raja Muzaffar Bhat, Convener J&K RTI Movement, Abdul Rehaman Wani, Sheikh Fayaz, Dr. Zameer Ahmad and Dr. Tariq Ahmad among others.

Mushtaq Pahalgami has also been trying to bring media attention to the environmental damage caused to the valley due to the ongoing political unrest. He has also written a number of letters to various government departments seeking intervention to stop the timber and land mafias from exploiting the region's natural resources by taking undue advantage of the situation. Pahalgami recently also visited Sonamarg and exposed a politician-mafia-business nexus in the region, and found that forest land was rapidly being misused and illegally encroached upon followed by rampant illegal commercial construction.

On 15 October 2014, the Himalayan Welfare Organization, Pahalgam, organised a one-day seminar on the Jammu and Kashmir Right to Information Act, 2009 (RTI) and Jammu and the Kashmir Public Service Guarantee Act 2011 (PSGA). Held at Townhall, Pahalgam, under the leadership of HWO president Pahalgami, the seminar emphasized the importance of citizen awareness and the right to question, particularly in the post-flood relief and rehabilitation scenario. An awareness camp on the subject was also organised earlier, on 10 September 2013 at Pahalgam with the support of the 'Collation of Unions', RTI and PSGA Acts, including statutory laws which guarantee time bound delivery of services for public services rendered by the government to citizens, provisions and mechanisms for punishing errant public servants who are deficient in providing services stipulated under statute.

Pahalgami and his team have filed and fought more than 250 RTI and PSGA cases, particularly concerning land grabbing, illegal construction and illegal land-use in and around Pahalgam; ensuring implementation of the 2008 J&K High-court order staying all construction and repair in the region. This has resulted in positive interventions and more than two hundred notices served in various cases, to the Department of Social Welfare, Ministry of Tourism, Department of Education, Department of Consumer Affairs, Department of Public Distribution, rural Development, Ministry of Environment, Forest Department, (Amarnath Yatra) Shrine Board, Integrated Child development project; GOI, and State Assembly Secretariat, among others.

Mushtaq Pahalgami has made the citizen's movement in Pahalgam unprecedentedly strong by susutained efforts at inculcating a culture of rational critique and inquiry among the people of the region. His persistent efforts in questioning the state-machinery's inefficacy has given much-needed impetus to the state's anti-corruption movement.