It’s all falling apart for Congress at this crucial juncture of BMC Elections

It’s all falling apart for the Congress in Mumbai. In just three weeks since the polls were announced, several local faces of the party, including two former legislators, four sitting corporators and some former corporators, among others, have jumped ship. On Sunday, two-time sitting corporator from Andheri’s Versova Devendra Amberkar — who had headed the party in the Mumbai municipality not so long ago — became the latest to defect from the party.

 

The slanging match involving senior leaders Gurudas Kamat and Narayan Rane against Mumbai Congress president Sanjay Nirupam, admitted insiders, had also hit the poll campaign hard.

 

In a desperate bid to keep his flock together, Nirupam was Sunday seen assuring sitting corporators that they would be renominated. “The party has declared a policy to renominate all sitting corporators,” said Nirupam, adding that barring some exceptions all incumbents would be given tickets.

 

Suggesting that differences over ticket distribution at the district level had spurred most of the defections, Nirupam tweeted, “Who denied ticket to Amberkar while the candidate shortlisting process was still on at the district level?” This was being seen as a dig at Kamat, who is the party’s seniormost face and a former MP from Mumbai North- West parliamentary constituency that forms one district in the party’s organisational make-up. The corporator’s ward falls in this district. Incidentally, Amberkar, a Kamat supporter, had lashed out at Nirupam in the past. Sources said Nirupam’s barb was also a retort to Kamat’s previous dig at Nirupam where he had accused him of “deliberately driving people out of the Congress”.

 

It, however, triggered another sharp reaction from Kamat. “Nobody had denied ticket (to Amberkar). It was still at discussion stage. How can Nirupam question denial when it was still at discussion stage and has to be still referred to Mumbai president,” Kamat said. “Anybody who knows how to preside over a party would know that the first criterion for shortlisting candidates is to take senior leaders into confidence and finalise norms for selection, which has not been done,” he added, suggesting that this apparent oversight was to be blamed for the exodus. Kamat also questioned Nirupam’s silence when other sitting corporators Waqarrunisa Ansari (South Mumbai) and Yogesh Bhoir and Parminder Bhamra (Mumbai North) quit the party.

 

Amberkar confirmed that he had quit after realising he would not be renominated from the ward he had been representing. Raising allegations against party’s North West district president and former MLA Baldev Khosa, Amberkar said, “He (Khosa) has denied me a ticket for his own vested interests.” He also blamed Nirupam for it.

 

Khosa, when contacted, reiterated, “The candidate selection process was still ongoing at the district stage and nothing had been finalised. He (Amberkar) had walked out of his own accord.” He, however, conceded that he had “raised a complaint with Kamatji against Amberkar’s candidature” on the ground that the latter “had worked against me and party” in the 2014 Assembly polls. Amberkar has rubbished this claim, and contended that Khosa wanted to nominate his people from the ward.

 

Sources said another former MLA Ashok Jadhav had opposed the renomination of another senior sitting corporator Mohsin Haider in the same district. They said the nomination of Nirupam supporter Kamlesh Rai, a former corporator, from Andheri (East) was opposed too. Rai’s wife is a sitting corporator.