Sofia Firdous makes history as Odisha's first woman Muslim MLA

Sofia Firdous was elected to the Odisha Assembly as the first-ever Muslim woman legislator (Image: twitter/Sofia Firdous)

Sofia Firdous, the Congress legislator from Barabati-Cuttack district, has etched her name in history. With her election to the Odisha Assembly, she becomes the state's first-ever Muslim woman MLA. Firdous secured her victory by a margin of 8,001 votes, triumphing over her rival candidate, Purna Chandra Mahapatra of the BJP.

Here are 5 facts about Odisha's first-ever woman Muslim MLA:

1. The 32-year-old Sofia Firdous hails from a political family and is the daughter of prominent Congressman Mohammed Moquim. In the 2024 Odisha Assembly elections, the party fielded Firdous instead of Moquim, and she won.

2. Firdous graduated from Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology with a degree in civil engineering. In 2022, she also finished the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore's (IIMB) Executive General Management Program.

3. The Confederation of Real Estate Developers' Associations of India (CREDAI) elected Firdous as its president in 2023 for the chapter in Bhubaneswar. She serves as the CREDAI women's branch East Zone Coordinator.

4. She is a founding member of INWEC India and the co-chair of the CII - Indian Green Building Council (IGBC) Bhubaneswar Chapter. She is married to entrepreneur Sheikh Meraj Ul Haque.

5. She is the successor to the first female chief minister of Odisha, Nandini Satpathy, who served the same constituency in 1972.

The Biju Janata Dal (BJD) and Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik's twenty-four-year dominance in the state came to an end in 2024 when the BJP won 78 of the 147 seats in the Odisha Assembly.

In the Lok Sabha elections as well, the BJP won 20 out of the 21 state seats, which is eight higher than its total of 12 from the 2019 elections. The BJD failed to gain even one seat; the last seat went to Congress.

(Source: NDTV)