Mumbai: The man facing severe heat in Mumbai, both from within and outside Congress, at the moment is Sanjay Nirupam. Many have believed the Congress's Mumbai chief to have caused not just one, but several splits in the party, which has resulted in the party’s abysmal performance in the BMC polls.
Just a day before the polls, Nirupam had predicted a drubbing for his party and blamed senior leader of his own party for it. Nirupam’s steep rise in the party and his proximity to Rahul Gandhi had caused severe heartburn in the Congress, causing a clear split between him and another faction led by senior leader and former Union minister Gurdudas Kamat.
The Congress would’ve hoped to make a dent in seats and votes of the Shiv Sena and the BJP to boost its cadre at a time when the Uttar Pradesh election campaign is at dead heat. But its repeated flops in recent municipal and panchayat polls held since last one year show that the Congress high command has lacked, most of all, able ground leaders – Sanjay Nirupam being only the most recent example of this kind.Also Read: The Richest Candidate Wins in Richest Civic Body of India
But the person facing extreme political heat is also the person with an extremely diverse, interesting and controversial background. Among other things, he’s been an editor, an MP, a reality show star and a member of two different parties.
Nirupam wasn’t always associated with the Congress or with active politics for that matter. Born in a relatively backward district of Rohtas in Bihar, Nirupam graduated in Political Science and went on to join RSS0-affiliated magazine Panchjanya as a sub-editor. He would go on to work with two other publications after this. Jansatta, a sister publication of the Indian Express, and later Shiv Sena’s mouthpiece, then called Dopahar ka Saamna.
He is said to have been handpicked by party supremo Bal Thackeray himself and remained Thackeray’s blue-eyed-boy till the end. Nirupam went on to become the party’s nominated member in the Rajya Sabha. We won Shiv Sena’s praise and the wrath of the Parliament members when he called Dilip Kumar a ‘Pakistani’ for supporting Deepa Mehta’s controversial film Fire. He went on to be an MP thrice. Also Read | Uddhav Thackeray: The Tiger Cub Grows His stripes
He then quit the party in 2005 owing to his tiff with BJP’s Pramod Majahan, who was also considered close to the Shiv Sena.
Three years later, he appeared in the reality show Bigg Boss only to be voted out on day 6 of the show.
He then joined the Congress and created another controversy by calling Smriti Irani someone who used to “charge money to perform dance shows on TV” who had later on pretended to become “an election analyst”. That was not it. Also Read: Shiv Sena Still Short of Halfway Mark in Mumbai: Two Likely Scenarios
Then he earned the ire of his own party by calling Jawaharlal Nehru a ‘fascist soldier’ in the party mouthpiece Congress Darshan.
Nirupam, who is credited with creating a generational split within the party, offered to resign on Thursday. But whether it will mean a pause in his political innings and a halt to controversies surrounding him, we’ll have to wait and see.
Comments
0 comment