Usmani is minorities panel chief, TT victim member

LUCKNOW: The Yogi Adityanath government on Tuesday appointed former MLC Tanveer Haider Usmani as the chairman of UP State Minorities Commission (UPSMC) and Sofiya Ahmed, a victim of triple talaq, as its member. Both Usmani and Sophiya are from Kanpur. Besides chairman, the commission has eight members. The other seven members are Rumana Siddiqui and Syed Iqbal Haider (both from Lucknow), Suresh Jain Rituraj (from Meerut), Sukhdarshan Bedi (Muzaffarnagar), Manoj Kumar Masih (Badaun), Afzal Chowdhary (Ghaziabad) and Mohd Alam (Fatehpur).

LUCKNOW: The Yogi Adityanath government on Tuesday appointed former MLC Tanveer Haider Usmani as the chairman of UP State Minorities Commission (UPSMC) and Sofiya Ahmed, a victim of triple talaq, as its member.

Both Usmani and Sophiya are from Kanpur. Besides chairman, the commission has eight members. The other seven members are Rumana Siddiqui and Syed Iqbal Haider (both from Lucknow), Suresh Jain Rituraj (from Meerut), Sukhdarshan Bedi (Muzaffarnagar), Manoj Kumar Masih (Badaun), Afzal Chowdhary (Ghaziabad) and Mohd Alam (Fatehpur).

The post of chairman and members had been lying vacant for the past 10 months ever since the installation of the BJP government in UP.

“I am grateful that chief minister Yogi Adityanath has chosen me for the job. Apart from other issues related to the welfare of minorities, since I have myself been the victim of triple ‘talaq’ , my focus would be to help women who have similarly been victimised,” said Sofiya.