On 20 March 2006, the IISS hosted a Special Round Table Discussion with Mr Wajahat Habibullah, Chief Information Commissioner, Government of India. Mr Habibullah spoke on ‘Kashmir: Prospects for the Democratic Process’. The Round Table Discussion was chaired by Sir Hilary Synnott, IISS Senior Consulting Fellow.
Mr Wajahat Habibullah was appointed India’s first Chief Information Commissioner in October 2005, to implement the Right to Information Act (2005). A retired senior civil servant in the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), he has spent over 15 years in Jammu & Kashmir, including key appointments as Divisional Commissioner and Special Commissioner. He also served as Joint Secretary in the Prime Minister’s Office, and as Secretary to the Government of India in the Ministries of Textiles and Panchayati Raj. He retired from the IAS in September 2005.
From October 2003-August 2004, Mr Habibullah was a Senior Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington DC, working on a monograph titled ‘Kashmir: The Problem & its Resolution’. He has published several articles on Kashmir.
