Bilquis Mir: Contribution to Jammu and Kashmir

Bilquis Mir is an Indian canoeing and kayaking athlete, coach and sports official from Srinagar whose career is closely connected with water sports on Dal Lake. International Canoe Federation material records her participation for India at the 2009 ICF Canoe Sprint World Cup in Hungary and her later work coaching the national women’s team.

Mir’s contribution to Jammu and Kashmir is most visible in the development of canoeing and kayaking as organised competitive sports. Her career links athlete development, coaching, event administration and the use of Srinagar’s lakes as training environments.

After competing internationally, she moved into coaching. Published profiles describe her work encouraging girls and young women to enter water sports, while ICF material records her later role with the national women’s team. This gives her career a regional dimension beyond personal competition: it includes building participation and coaching capacity.

Her appointment as Competition Director for the inaugural Khelo India Water Sports Games in Srinagar in 2025 placed her in a formal leadership role for a major water-sports event hosted in Jammu and Kashmir. Such roles connect local sporting infrastructure with national competition structures.

The ICF has also documented Mir’s involvement in an initiative at Pokhribal Lake in Srinagar that combined paddle sport with environmental clean-up. This work connects sport with the condition of the water bodies on which training and competition depend.

For AllAboutKashmir, Mir is therefore relevant not only as an athlete but also as a coach, technical official, organiser and advocate for water-based sport in Srinagar. The encyclopedia treats each of these as separate, source-backed roles rather than reducing her contribution to a single claim of being a 'first'.