Wajahat Habibullah a former civil servant from the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) batch of 1968 is from an old Lucknow family. He has spent much of his career in Jammu and Kashmir, most of it in the Kashmir Valley. He has also served on the staff of two Indian Prime Ministers—Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi as Director and Joint Secretary respectively— and was administrator of the Union Territory of Lakshadweep, and held the post of Minister in the Embassy of India, Washington DC, U.S., and Director, Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration. Subsequently, he was Secretary in the Department of Consumer Affairs, and in the Ministries of Textiles and Panchayati Raj. After retiring from the service Habibullah served as India’s first Chief Information Commissioner- heading the final court of appeal under India’s Right to Information Act-and Chairman, National Commission for Minorities. A former Randolph Jennings fellow at the United States Institute of Peace, Habibullah has been awarded the Rajiv Gandhi Award for Excellence in Secularism. He is a member of the Broadcast Contents Complaints Council, India. He is the author of ‘My Kashmir: The Dying of the Light’.