Ups and downs in a political journey
NEWSMAKER / SANJAY NIRUPAM
Mumbai Congress Chief Sanjay Nirupam has offered to resign after the party’s poor showing in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation elections.
A Shiv Sena import, he was made Mumbai Regional Congress Committee president by Rahul Gandhi in March 2015, months after the party was wiped out in the 2014 general election and then lost the Maharashtra Assembly polls, to revive a wilting organisation in the country’s financial capital. Sanjay had earned his reputation as a forceful speaker during Lok Sabha debates and his lung power was often put to good use by party managers in the House, to shout down the then opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Nirupam represented the Mumbai North constituency in the Lok Sabha in 2009-14. He lost to the BJP’s Gopal Shetty in 2014. Before that, he was a Rajya Sabha member from the Shiv Sena but then shifted to the Congress.
Originally from Rohtas in Bihar, Nirupam was also seen by many in the Congress as a good choice to counter the vitriolic Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief Raj Thackeray, whose musclemen derived pleasure in targeting migrants from the Hindi heartland in Mumbai. As he set out to recast the Mumbai Congress, Nirupam’s ascension did not go well with some of the Maharashtra Congress leaders, who always eyed the ex-Sena leader with suspicion and never lost an opportunity to needle him. His rivalry with party veteran Gurudas Kamat is known in political circles.
Recently, Nirupam faced trouble from within the party after former legislator Krishna Hegde quit the Congress to join the BJP. As complaints over his alleged “autocratic” behaviour and over ticket distribution for the BMC polls reached Rahul Gandhi, former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda was sent to pacify the warring factions. In December 2015, an article, which questioned Jawaharlal Nehru’s foreign policy, published in a party-backed journal, Congress Darshan, provided oxygen to the anti-Nirupam camp. Faced with pressure from state and central leaders, the central leadership sent a showcause notice to the Mumbai unit chief but accepted his explanation without fuss. Nirupam, who had earlier worked as a journalist in Jansatta and later in Sena mouthpiece Saamna, had offered to resign then, too, but survived.
For Rahul, Nirupam, 53, was doing the right things as he started working on a plan to dislodge the Sena-BJP combine from the BMC, the richest local body in the country with a ~35,000-crore annual budget. Another reason Team Rahul attached importance to a BMC win was the assessment that it would indicate the return of the middle class, which had deserted the Congress in 2014. Nirupam attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Phadnavis and Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray with equal aplomb, winning brownie points in Delhi. He also organised citywide protests against demonetisation and roped locals into a ‘chaurahe pe charcha’ initiative.