Meet Sofia Firdous, Odisha’s First-Ever Woman Muslim MLA: 5 Facts

Sofia Firdous, Congress MLA from Odisha’s Barabati-Cuttack seat, has etched her name in history. She is the first Muslim woman MLA to be elected to the Odisha Assembly. Ms Firdous defeated BJP’s Purna Chandra Mohapatra by a margin of 8,001 votes.

Who is Sofia Firdous?

1. Sofia Firdous, 32, comes from a political family. She is the daughter of senior Congress leader Mohammed Mokim. The party fielded Ms Firdous in place of Mr Mokim in the 2024 Odisha Assembly elections, who emerged victorious. 2. Ms Firdous holds a degree in civil engineering from Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology. She also completed the Executive General Management Programme from the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIMB) in 2022.
2. In 2023, Ms Firdous was elected as the President of the Bhubaneswar chapter of the Confederation of Real Estate Developers Association of India (CREDAI). She also serves as the Eastern Region Coordinator for the CREDAI Women’s Wing.
3. She is the co-chair of the Bhubaneswar chapter of CII – Indian Green Building Council (IGBC) and a core member of INWEC India. She is married to entrepreneur Sheikh Meraj Ul Haque.
4. She follows in the footsteps of Nandini Satpathy, Odisha’s first woman chief minister, who represented the same constituency in 1972.

In the 2024 Odisha Assembly elections, the BJP won a majority by winning 78 of the 147 seats, ending the 24-year rule of Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik and the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) in the state.

In the Lok Sabha elections too, the BJP won 20 out of 21 seats in the state, eight more than the 12 it won in the 2019 elections. The remaining seats went to the Congress, while the BJD did not get a single seat.