Quick Facts
Biography
Shah Faesal (born 17 May 1983) is an Indian civil servant from the State of Jammu and Kashmir. In 2009, he became the first Kashmiri to top the Indian Civil Services Examination and the first candidate from Kashmir in several years to be selected to the Indian Administrative Service through open merit. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh also congratulated him on his success. He has emerged as a youth icon and a public intellectual in the state of J&K.
Views on Kashmir-India relations
Shah Faesal has written extensively on the relationship of Kashmir and India in a nuanced manner on many occasions which has been praised many times. During 2016 Kashmir unrest, Shah Faesal asked the national media not to use his pictures for drawing comparison with Burhan Wani.
Criticism
Many Kashmiris consider him the ‘poster boy’ of Indian bureaucracy.