Kamaal Farooqui

Kamaal Farooqui (born 1 July 1962) is an Indian politician, businessman, and educator. He is a senior leader of the Maharashtra state and Indian National Congress. He was the former President of Consumer Welfare Advisory Committee and became a cabinet minister in the Government of Maharashtra.

Kamaal Farooqui was born in Ajanta, Aurangabad District, Maharashtra, India to an aristocratic family of Qadis, a membare of the Al Farooqui clan under the Hyderabad State.

His paternal grandfather Qazi Badiuddin Farooqui was the last Inamdar, Khatib and Qadi of Ajanta under the Princely State of Hyderabad. His maternal grandfather was of Yemeni Hadhrami descent and from the Bin Siddiq tribe of Wadi Bin Ali, Yemen, and his maternal grandmother was from the Pashtun Rohilla clan.

In 1991, Farooqui married Nasreen Begum (née Khan) daughter of a businessman in Aurangabad, and they together had 2 sons and 1 daughter.

Farooqui began his political career in 1978 in the student wing of Indian National Congress, the National Students Union of India, and then later Indian Youth Congress. He was made Joint Secretary of Maharashtra with Ashok Chavan, who later became the Chief Minister of Maharashtra.

He served  as the Chairman of MPCC's Minority Department. He left the Congress Party in 2004 due to differences with the local leadership and contested elections from the Bahujan Samaj Party in 2004.

After the elections Farooqui joined Nationalist Congress Party of Sharad Pawar and was given a Ministerial rank in the Government of Maharashtra and served as the General Secretary of the party in Maharashtra and Member of National Council.

Farooqui along with his son Umar later returned to Indian National Congress in 2024 ahead of the Vidhan Sabha polls.^{[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]}