Bhubaneswar: The Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee (OPCC) on Monday asked Barabati-Cuttack MLA Sofia Firdous to resign from the party if she plans to contest the 2029 Assembly elections from another political outfit.
OPCC president Bhakta Charan Das said Firdous, who was elected to the Assembly on a Congress ticket in 2024, should give up the party’s primary membership before announcing her candidature for another organisation.
“If she has decided to contest the 2029 Assembly elections from another party, she should resign from the Congress. She won the 2024 election on a Congress ticket and, therefore, should quit the party before announcing her candidature from another political outfit,” Das said.
His remarks came a day after former legislator Mohammed Moquim announced that his daughter Firdous would not seek re-election from the Barabati-Cuttack seat on a Congress ticket and would instead contest the 2029 polls as a candidate of the newly-formed Odisha Janata Congress (OJC).
Moquim, who heads the regional outfit, also alleged that the Congress had moved away from its core ideology and claimed that the party had “no future” in Odisha or the country.
Firdous had won the prestigious Barabati-Cuttack Assembly seat in the 2024 elections, defeating her BJP rival Purnachandra Mohapatra by around 8,000 votes.
She, along with two other Congress MLAs, Ramesh Jena and Dasarathi Gomango, was subsequently suspended from the party over alleged cross-voting in the March 16 Rajya Sabha elections in Odisha.
