Congress makes Milind Deora chief of Mumbai unit, gives Sanjay Nirupam the seat he wants

Sanjay Nirupam was not popular among senior Mumbai Congress leaders, while Deora is. Nirupam will now fight the Lok Sabha polls from Mumbai North West.

Congress leader Milind Deora | Twitter

Mumbai: Less than three weeks before the Lok Sabha elections, the Congress Monday replaced its Mumbai unit chief Sanjay Nirupam with former MP Milind Deora, who is said to be the popular choice among most senior Mumbai Congress leaders.

In an attempt to keep the Nirupam camp happy too, the Congress also finalised his candidature from the seat he coveted, Mumbai North West. This constituency was the stronghold of senior Congress leader Gurudas Kamat, who died last year. Most Congress leaders had opposed Nirupam’s nomination from the seat and said he should instead stick to Mumbai North, from where he was elected MP in 2009.

The All India Congress Committee released a statement Monday evening, saying: “Honourable Congress President Shri Rahul Gandhi has appointed Shri Milind Deora as the new President of the Mumbai Regional Congress Committee. The party appreciates the contribution of outgoing President Shri Sanjay Nirupam.”

Thanking the Congress leadership for giving him this responsibility, Deora said: “This appointment comes at a challenging time and I commit myself to strengthen the roots of the party in Mumbai. I appeal to all leaders and workers to work unitedly defending and furthering party ideals.”

Adding that the Congress is the only political outfit that truly represents Mumbai’s spirit and nature, Deora said he will focus on holistic development as Mumbai Congress chief, focusing on housing, protecting small and medium enterprises and furthering communal harmony.

In a separate statement, Nirupam thanked the party leadership for trusting him with the Mumbai North West constituency and congratulated Deora. “I will take all party workers and people from this constituency (Mumbai North West) and I believe I will fight with all strength and win.”

He added: “I was Mumbai Congress president for four years. In this period, I did everything that was appropriate for the party successfully and with all my heart. I worked round the clock for the party. I wish the newly appointed Mumbai Congress president all the best and congratulate him.”

Move to quell infighting

The sudden change in leadership is, perhaps, an attempt to quell the increasing factionalism within the Mumbai Congress, with most senior party members having been against Nirupam’s leadership.

Last year, a group of Congress leaders from Mumbai met Mallikarjun Kharge, the party in-charge for Maharashtra, demanding Nirupam’s removal. They asked for Deora to be appointed as Mumbai Congress chief instead.

The clamour to have Nirupam ousted once again grew when Deora recently tweeted saying that the Mumbai Congress cannot become a cricket pitch for sectarian politics and infighting cannot be allowed to threaten the party’s base in the city. He later told ThePrint that his tweets were a spontaneous reaction and that the infighting was just differences of opinion that the party would sort out internally.

Deora, whose late father Murli Deora had also been Mumbai Congress president, is said to be a close aide of Congress chief Rahul Gandhi, and was instrumental in organising the latter’s foreign visits over the past two years to boost ties with the Indian diaspora. Deora has been an MP from the Mumbai South constituency and is the party’s official candidate from the same seat for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls.

Opposition to Nirupam

Recently, speaking to ThePrint, Nirupam said he knew he wasn’t the popular choice as Mumbai Congress president, but that the party chief had given him the responsibility and that was all that mattered to him.

“In the entire country, I am probably the only such regional Congress president against whom multiple people have spoken, saying ‘Nirupam hatao (remove Nirupam)’,” he said.

Nirupam was appointed Mumbai Congress chief in 2015, a decade after joining the party. The elevation came close on the heels of the Congress’ complete decimation in the city in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

The former MP’s quest to revive the party in Mumbai, however, was a lonely one. Trying to get a beleaguered Congress back on track, Nirupam would constantly hold press conferences targeting the BJP-led Maharastra government and Shiv Sena-led Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, and held several events and rallies to increase voter connect.

Party functionaries close to Nirupam maintained that its former MPs and legislators would almost never turn up for these events, sending a message that the party is still a divided house.