CNN Central News & Network–ITDC India Epress/ITDC News Bhopal: When Odisha Assembly election results came out on June 4, Tuesday, the Indian National Congress’s Sofia Firdous created history by becoming the first woman Muslim MLA in the history of the state. The 32-year-old Sofia Firdous will represent the Barabati-Cuttack segment in the 147-member Odisha Assembly.
Interestingly, Odisha’s first woman chief minister Nandini Satpathy represented the seat in 1972. The Congress leader was also the last woman to win from Cuttack-Barabati before Firdous.
Congress candidate Sofia Firdous is the daughter of senior party leader Mohammed Moquim. She won a battle of debutants to retain the Barabati-Cuttack seat, beating Purna Chandra Mahapatra of the BJP by a margin of 8,001 votes. She polled 53,339 votes in all while Mahapatra got 45,338. Biju Janata Dal’s Prakash Chandra Behera, who came third, got 40,035.
The Congress party decided to field Sofia Firdous after her father was disqualified from contesting polls following his conviction in a corruption case.