MJ Akbar is an Indian politician. MJ Akbar started his career as a journalist. However, he eventually became a politician. Apart from the Indian National Congress, he is also a key figure in the Bharatiya Janata Party. Not only in India, he also served abroad as an important bureaucrat.
Biography/Wiki
MJ Akbar or Mobashar Jawed Akbar was born on January 11, 1951 in a Bihari family. According to his book Blood Brothers – A Family Saga, Akbar’s grandfather was a Hindu named Prayag. He lives in Trinipara, a small town near Chandan Nagar in West Bengal. His grandfather Prayag was orphaned in a communal riot and raised by a Muslim couple. Later, he converted to Islam and received the name Rehmatullah.
MJ Akbar’s old photos
family
MJ Akbar was born into a Muslim family in Trinipara, West Bengal, to Shri Sheikh Akbar Ali and Shrimati Imtiaz Akbar. He has only one sibling, sister Gazala Akbar Sharma.
In 1975, he married Mallika Joseph Akbar, a fellow Times of India journalist. The couple has a son, Prayaag Jawad Akbar, and a daughter, Mukulika, who studies law at Jesus College, Cambridge University, UK.
MJ Akbar’s son Prayaag Akbar
Profession
Akbar attended Calcutta Boys’ School and later joined Presidency College, Calcutta in 1967, where he studied BA (Honours) in English. In 1971, he joined The Times of India as an intern. At some point, he moved to the Illustrated Weekly of India, where he stayed until 1973. In 1976, he joined the Ananda Bazar Patrika (ABP) group as editor of Sunday Weekly. After the success of The Sunday Times, he founded The Telegraph, India’s first modern newspaper.
Old photos of MJ Akbar
In 1989, he entered politics for the first time and successfully ran for the Indian general election in the Kishanganj constituency of Bihar on behalf of the Indian National Congress. However, he lost his seat in the 1991 Indian general election. In 1991, he joined the Government of India as a Consultant in the Ministry of Human Resources. In 1992, he resigned from politics and returned to journalism full-time. In 1994, he founded another newspaper, The Asian Age. In 2005, he was appointed by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to serve on the committee drafting a ten-year charter for Muslim countries on behalf of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.
MJ Akbar holds talks with senior UAE ministers
In 2006, he joined the Brookings Institution in Washington as a visiting fellow at the Brookings Project on U.S. Policy toward the Islamic World. In 2014, Akbar joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and served as the party’s national spokesperson. In July 2015, he was elected to the Federal Assembly from Jharkhand. He was sworn in as Minister of State for Foreign Affairs on July 5, 2016.
MJ Akbar takes oath
dispute
- In October 2018, several women accused Akbar of sexual harassment, and a journalist named Priya Ramani said she was in a hotel room when Akbar was the editor of the Asian Age newspaper. He was harassed. In her complaint, she said she felt uncomfortable.
- Another journalist, Ghazala Wahab, also accused him of sexual assault. Ghazala Wahab said: “He called me in his hut. I knocked on the door and went in. He was standing by the door and before I knew it, he closed it The door trapped me between his body and the door. I flinched instinctively, and he hugged me and bent down to kiss me. I closed my mouth and struggled to turn my face to one side. “October 2018. Resigned as Federal Minister of Foreign Affairs on the 17th; due to various sexual harassment accusations against him.
Ghazala Wahab accuses Akbar of sexual assault
Salary/Net Worth
He gets a monthly salary of Rs 50,000 and a constituency allowance of Rs 45,000/month. He owns jewelery assets worth over Rs 38 lakh. As of 2016, his net worth is over Rs 36 crore.
interesting facts
- In 1990, he published his first book, Nehru: The Making of India.
MJ Akbar writes Nehru: The Making of India
- Akbar was the spokesperson of the late former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.
- He also served as the editor-in-chief of the Hyderabad-based newspaper Deccan Chronicle.
- To date, he has written as many as 10 books.
Categories: Biography
Source: HIS Education