Nagma Muhammad Fareed of Kasaragod is the Joint Secretary of the Ministry of External Affairs
First Muslim woman to become Indian Foreign Service officer
If the right opportunity is given to Muslim women, they can achieve anything and scale any heights. Nagma Muhammad Fareed who is appointed as the Joint Secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs, held by Sushma Swaraj, is a fine example for this. Nagma Fareed is the first Muslim woman who was selected for the coveted Indian Foreign Service ( IFS ) post in India and she is also the first Muslim woman who is working in an important position with the External affairs Minister.
1920 and 1930s Muslim Community of Kerala and Karnataka was very backward. But a boy from ‘Pudipura family’ of Chemanadu village in Kasaragodu, situated on the bank of Chandragiri river, started going to primary school in Kasaragodu crossing the river during those days. He completed his high school in Mangaluru and left for Madras ( now Chennai) for college education. He got two degrees from the university and became an advocate. After returning to Kasaragodu, he started his profession as advocate and became famous as ‘Vakeel Ahmed’.
Nagma Muhammad Fareed is the daughter of this illustrious father Ahmed. Ahmed has sent his three sons to Madras for higher education. Against the existing practice in Muslim community at that time, Ahmed sent his only daughter to school. She was the only Muslim girl who had completed metric education during that time in the district.
Nagma was very good in her studies and secured good marks at Schools and colleges . Her parents wanted her to become a doctor. But the ambition of Fathima Nagma was different. She wanted to write IAS exam. She was educated at St Stephen's College & Delhi School of Economics. She holds a bachelor's degree in English Literature and a master's degree in Sociology. She appeared for IAS ( UPSC) exams in 1990. She secured a rank within 100. Due to her good ranking she got the opportunity to select the foreign service . So, Nagma selected Foreign service and joined in the batch of 1991.
In the beginning, she served in France, Arab countries, Sri Lanka, Nepal and other countries in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Later, she was appointed first as the Indian High Commissioner to Thailand and later as the Indian Ambassador to Tunisia. Before this posting, she served as a staff officer to Prime Minister I.K. Gujral. She then served as the first woman Deputy Chief of Protocol (Ceremonial).For the last three years, she was serving as Indian High Commissioner to Brunei Darussalam.
Now, she is elevated as the Joint Secretary to Foreign Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj. One of her brother is serving in high rank in the Indian Air Force.
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SIR in Gujarat: More than 17 lakh deceased voters found on electoral rolls
Ahmedabad (PTI): The ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls in Gujarat has revealed that more than 17 lakh deceased voters were still included in the existing voter list across the state, a release by the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) has stated.
According to the release issued on Thursday, the SIR exercise started in Gujarat on November 4 with booth-level officers (BLOs) distributing enumeration forms in their designated areas.
The campaign will continue till December 11.
"In the last one month, enumeration forms have been distributed to more than five crore voters registered in the 2025 electoral roll. In most of the 33 districts, 100 per cent of the distribution has been completed. Work on digitising the returned forms is currently underway. So far, the digitisation work has been completed in 12 out of 182 assembly constituencies," it said.
These include Dhanera and Tharad of Banaskantha district, Limkheda and Dahod (ST) of Dahod district, Bayad of Aravalli district, Dhoraji, Jasdan and Gondal of Rajkot district, Keshod of Junagadh district, Mehmadabad of Kheda district, Khambhat of Anand district and Jalalpore of Navsari district.
Dang district is at the forefront in this work with 94.35 per cent digitisation of the counting forms, said the release.
"During this exercise, it was revealed that 17 lakh deceased voters were still included in the electoral roll across the state. More than 6.14 lakh voters were found absent from their addresses. It has been noticed that more than 30 lakh voters have permanently migrated," the release said.
BLOs found more than 3.25 lakh voters in the "repeated" category, which means that their names figured at more than one place, the release stated.
