Waheed Rehman Para

Waheed-ur-Rehman Para is youth president and spokesperson of the Jammu and Kashmir Peoples Democratic Party, which is ruling the northern state of Jammu and Kashmir. He became the youngest spokesperson of the party after it formed an alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party in March 2015Before joining politics, Mr Para was a social and political activist.

Born in 1988 in a small village in Naira, Pulwama in South Kashmir. Mr Para's grandfather, Abdul Rehman Para, was a Congress politician, a famous social activist and also a known worker of the PDP patron Mufti Mohammad Sayeed. Before joining politics, Mr Para was a youth activist and a prolific writer. His writings would often appear in local daily newspapers published in Srinagar, Kashmir. He was trained in USA for an investigative journalism program at Boston University. Mr Para did his masters in Peace and Conflict Studies at Islamic University of Science and Technology in Awantipora and was awarded a peace scholarship by the SIT Graduate Institute, Vermont USA.

Mr Para was also a member of "Kashmir Committee" revived in 2011 by Ram Jethmalani, former Member of Parliament and Union Minister. Kashmir Committee II took shape against the backdrop of the violent upsurge of 2010, when lakhs of young men and even children came out on the streets in Kashmir to vent their anger against the State government, for its callous response to the killing of 120 innocent young men and children, during the “stone pelting” movement, which forced closure of the government offices, schools, colleges and business establishments for months on end.

As a worker of Peoples Democratic Party, Mr Para, played a key role in the 2014 parliamentary elections that saw PDP winning all the three seats as well as assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir. He is a popular face among Kashmiri youth and has a strong grip over the youth in South Kashmir.

Mr Para was appointed "Political Analyst" to Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, in June 2015. The Project Management Unit (PMU) in the J&K Government Grievance Cell maintains close linkage with the "Political Analyst" for analysis of public grievances and formulation of broader policies. Para also coordinates outcome-oriented disposal of the grievances in coordination with PMU and concerned government and non-government stakeholders.

Waheed took part in2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, held in Paris, as a special representative from the state of J&K. He presented a speech on the community-based development that addressed the climate change and the role of youth in overcoming the challenges of climate change.

While participating in a roundtable discussion on the ‘Climate Generations’ organized by the Government of France, at Hall 5 in Le Bourget on the afternoon of December 8, he said, “we have reasons to be concerned about climate change the effects of which have been already felt in our state, including warmer temperatures for longer periods and long dry spells during the cropping season.”

On the intervening night of 4 and 5 August 2019, Waheed-ur-Rehman Parra was placed under preventive detention by the Indian Government, under the controversial preventive detention law. The detention followed Indian government's decision of scrapping Article 370 of the Constitution of India, which gave the state of Jammu & Kashmir semi-autonomous powers. "In #NayaKashmir, GOI jails young leaders to show them the worth of their belief in Indian Democracy @parawahid still under detention at MLA hostel, Srinagar", wrote the official twitter account of Jammu and Kashmir Peoples Democratic Party. Para has been invited for this year’s Australia-India Youth Dialogue (AIYD), which is a track-two young leaders’ dialogue held every alternate year, but due to his continuous detention, he is unable to attend the dialogue.Fifteen rising and upcoming leaders from both countries meet at the annual conference. AIYD aims to strengthen the bilateral relationship between the two countries.