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A P Abdullahkutty, Munnawari Begum and Mafuja Khatun after being elected as members of the Haj Committee of India. (Twitter/@a_abdullakutty) BJP leader from Kerala A P Abdullahkutty was on Friday elected the chairperson of the Haj Committee of India while party colleagues Munnawari Begum and Mafuja Khatun were chosen as vice-chairpersons.
It’s for the first time the panel will have women as top office-bearers.
While Begum has been with the saffron party for more than two decades, Abdullahkutty and Khatun joined the BJP relatively recently. The two were colleagues earlier as well, both rising through the ranks, in the CPI(M).
A national vice-president of the BJP, Abdullahkutty began his political career with the Student Federation of India, the CPI(M)’s student wing, and rose to become its Kerala unit president in 1998.
A former Member of Parliament from Kannur, he swung into prominence when he defeated Kerala Congress chief Mullappally Ramachandran in the Lok Sabha polls — first in 1999 and then in 2004. Kannur has around 30 per cent Muslim population.
In 2009, however, Abdullahkutty fell out with the CPI(M) leadership, one of the reasons being his praise for Narendra Modi’s ‘Gujarat model’.
Expelled, he joined the Congress the same year and continued to rack up victories in Assembly elections, until 2016, when he lost from Thalassery. Three years later, he joined the BJP.
Visited Shri @blsanthosh Ji after being elected as the Chairperson of Haj Committee of India for his blessings, prayers, guidance and motivation.#rss@bjp4India @bjp4karnataka pic.twitter.com/XrelKevNoF
— A P Abdullakutty (@a_abdullakutty) April 22, 2022
Mafuja Khatun, a two-time CPI(M) MLA from Kumarganj in West Bengal’s South Dinajpur district, joined the BJP in 2017.
Barely six months after her joining, the party recognised her organisational skills and elevated her as the vice-chief of its minority morcha in the state. She is now the party’s Bengal unit vice-president, the first Muslim woman to hold the post.
Known for her fiery speeches, Khatun is hugely popular in Muslim-dominated areas of the twin districts of Dinajpur and Murshidabad.
The BJP’s hope to create and expand its base among the state’s Muslim voters, particularly women, she fought the 2019 General Election from Murshidabad’s Jangipur seat.
Although she lost — she was pitted against Congress candidate Abhijit Mukherjee, the son of former President Pranab Mukherjee — Khatun earned fame for being the first Muslim woman ever to be fielded by the BJP in Lok Sabha polls.
A BJP old-timer, Munnawari Begum is a member of the Central Waqf Council and also of the general body of the Minorities Ministry-funded Maulana Azad Education Foundation.
Earlier the vice-president of the BJP’s minority cell in Tamil Nadu, she came into prominence when she was seen accompanying Prime Minister Modi as he criss-crossed Tamil Nadu during his campaign for the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.
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