Kaneez Fatima is the lone Muslim woman MLA of the Congress in the newly-elected Karntaka Assembly. She was also the party's only Muslim woman candidate.
In an interview to The Scroll, after retaining, the Gulbarga North seat, Fatima said that Congress would lift the hijab ban in Karnataka. She said Congress will get girls who couldn't go to schools because of the hijab ban back to the classrooms.
Fatima had led a protest in 2022 against the hijab ban in schools enforced by Karnataka's BJP govt. She had said that if she can wear a hijab to the assembly, then girls can wear it to schools and colleges as well.
Kaneez Fatima entered polticis after her husband Qamarul Islam, a minister and six-term local MLA, died a few months before the 2018 Karnataka elections.