Updated: June 8, 2024 10:22 PM IST 
Odisha Assembly Election Results 2024: Congress candidate Sofia Firdous has etched her name in the annals of history as she became the first woman to be elected to the state’s Assembly in the recently concluded Odisha Assembly Elections, the results of which were declared on June 4 along with Lok Sabha Election results across the country.
Sofia was elected as MLA from the Barabati-Cuttack Assembly seat by defeating her nearest rival, BJP’s Purna Chandra Mahapatra by a margin of 8,001 votes. Notably, the 32-year-old Civil Engineer is the daughter of senior Congress leader and former MLA Mohammed Moquim.
Moquim was disqualified after he was convicted in a corruption which prompted the Congress to nominate Sofia from the seat.
Sofia Firdous, 32, is a civil engineer by profession, holding bachelors degrees in management and civil engineering. She is the daughter of Congress leader and former MLA Mohammed Moquim who was disqualified as MLA from the Barabati-Cuttack Assembly seat after being convicted of graft.
Prior to joining electoral politics, Sofia managed her father’s Metro Builders real estate firm as director. Firdous is also associated with the Bhubaneswar unit of the Confederation of Real Estate Developers’ Associations of India (Credai).
Sofia Firdous holds a B.Tech degree in Civil Engineering from the Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology under KIIT University in Bhubaneswar and has also completed the Executive General Management Program from the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIM-B) in 2022.
The Congress leader has declared her total assets at around Rs 5 crore with liabilities of nearly Rs 28 lakhs, as per the mandatory affidavit submitted by her to the Election Commission.
Congress leader Mohammed Moquim had won the Barabati-Cuttack seat in the 2019 state polls when he defeated Biju Janata Dal candidate Debashish Samantaray by a margin of 2,123 votes.
However, in September 2022, Moquim was convicted in a corruption case by the the special vigilance judge in Bhubaneswar, who sentenced the then-MLA to three years of rigorous imprisonment and a fine of Rs 50,000. Moquim’s conviction was upheld by the Orissa High Court in April this year.
The BJP did what many said was impossible in the 2024 Odisha state polls. The saffron party dethroned Former Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik and his BJD government after a 24-year reign, by winning 78 out of the 147 seats in the state assembly.
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