One Congress, many factions — Deora’s flight puts focus on how Mumbai unit has been crumbling

one congress, many factions — deora’s flight puts focus on how mumbai unit has been crumbling

One Congress, many factions — Deora’s flight puts focus on how Mumbai unit has been crumbling

Mumbai: Mumbai is where the Congress party was born. Seventy-two social reformers, journalists and lawyers congregated at the city’s Gokuldas Tejpal Sanskrit College on 28 December, 1885, and that was the beginning of India’s oldest party.

But, today, in this very city, the party is now just a pale shadow of its former self. In the 138 years of its existence, the Congress grew in Mumbai, ruled the city with an iron fist, gained voters, and dominated vote share. And then, it gradually started losing voters, vote share and crumbling under increased inter-party competition and constant internal bickering among its local leadership.

Milind Deora’s resignation earlier this week is perhaps just as much a byproduct of this factious internal politics as it is a consequence of seat-sharing tiffs with rival-turned-ally Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray).

Mumbai Congress leaders attribute multiple reasons for the party’s degeneration in Mumbai — Congress city leaders creating cliques by favouring only their loyalists, promotion of leaders closer to the leadership in Delhi, and disenchantment among the party’s grassroots workers.

Meanwhile, the growth of the undivided Shiv Sena over the past three decades and the Bharatiya Janata Party in Mumbai especially since 2014 has meant that all the above factors have crippled the party that much more.

Congress’ factionalism & slide in Mumbai

In November 2003, there was high drama within the Mumbai Congress. More than half of the party’s corporators in the Mumbai civic body who supposedly belonged to a faction led by party leader and Milind’s father Murli Deora elected a new Opposition leader defying the orders of Gurudas Kamat, the then Mumbai Congress president, who had appointed another Opposition leader.

This sort of infighting has always existed within the Congress in Mumbai, Bhai Jagtap, who was the city unit president from December 2020 to June 2023, says. The factionalism in itself is not a big deal, he adds.

“The Congress is a democratic party and everyone has a right to voice their opinion unlike in the BJP. But, though Murli Deora and Gurudas Kamat had political clashes, they were seasoned leaders. That kind of seasoned leadership which was seen at that time is not there anymore,” Jagtap tells ThePrint.

He adds, the current leadership doesn’t even call all senior leaders for major party events. “Only a few favourites are called.”

Varsha Gaikwad, Dharavi MLA and daughter of late former Congress MP Eknath Gaikwad, is the current Mumbai Congress president. She did not respond to ThePrint’s calls and text messages.

From leaders such as Murli Deora and Gurudas Kamat to those such as Priya Dutt, Sanjay Nirupam, Kripashankar Singh, Bhai Jagtap and Milind Deora, almost all prominent Mumbai Congress leaders have been willing or unwilling players in the clash of factions. And while leaders like Jagtap dismiss infighting and groupism as a product of personal ambition and intra-party democracy, it has evidently impacted the party’s performance in India’s economic powerhouse.

The party’s vote share in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has slid from 26.48 percent in 2002 and 26.38 percent in 2007 to 21.23 percent in 2012 and 15.94 percent in 2017, the last election to the Mumbai civic body, as per data from the State Election Commission. By 2017, the number of Congress corporators to the Mumbai civic body also halved from 61 in 2002 to 31 in 2017.

In terms of assembly seats, the Congress has only four MLAs and no MPs in Mumbai. In 2009, it represented 17 of Mumbai’s then 35 assembly constituencies and five of the city’s six parliamentary seats. Mumbai now has 36 assembly seats.

“Since 2014, there has been a polarisation of vote in favour of the BJP and people sitting on the fences in other parties have been crossing the road over to the BJP. A sizable number of votes that would traditionally come to the Congress have now shifted to the BJP from across corporates, buildings and slums,” a Mumbai Congress functionary says.

He adds that the leadership never managed infighting well. “Infighting was always there, but earlier despite infighting, because of the Congress’ dedicated vote bank, the party would perform well electorally. But, now the BJP is much stronger, infighting is still a reality, and it is hurting the Congress much more than before.”

The many Congresses within Mumbai Congress

Ahead of the BMC elections in 2012, there was an unusual protest at the residence of then Congress MP Priya Dutt. Around 5,000 of her party workers had gathered, shouting slogans. Their target, however, were not leaders from rival parties, but ‘rival’ leaders from the party itself, namely, the then Mumbai Congress president Kripashankar Singh and Naseem Khan, who was then a state cabinet minister.

Dutt was reportedly miffed as the list of candidates from corporator wards falling in her parliamentary constituency of Mumbai North Central was finalised by Singh and Khan without consulting her. Singh and Khan were both MLAs from assembly pockets that fall under her Lok Sabha constituency.

The protest, though peculiar, was not uncommon for the Congress.

Singh, a strong Congress leader who pulled the city’s North Indian vote bank, stepped down as the Mumbai Congress president in February 2012 after the Bombay High Court directed the Mumbai Police to seek sanction to prosecute him under the Prevention of Corruption Act following allegations of amassing disproportionate wealth. The resignation coincided with the party’s poor performance in the BMC polls.

A former senior Congress functionary says that around this time, there was also a softer Marathi versus non-Marathi divide brewing within the Mumbai Congress. Singh’s tenure as the Mumbai Congress chief was followed by a Marathi face, Janardhan Chandurkar.

Singh eventually quit the Congress in 2021 to join the BJP. Meanwhile, Dutt contested and lost the 2014 and 2019 assembly polls to BJP’s Poonam Mahajan, and has more or less withdrawn from party activities, party sources say.

During the tenure of Sanjay Nirupam as the Mumbai Congress president, the factionalism took the form of an original karyakarta versus outsider debate. Nirupam became the Mumbai unit head in 2015, a decade after he switched from the Shiv Sena as well as close on the heels of the party’s near decimation in Mumbai in the 2014 Lok Sabha and assembly polls.

His quest to revive the party, however, was a lonely one. Those close to Nirupam said other Mumbai Congress leaders would hardly ever turn up at events and protests organised by the former MP.

Gurudas Kamat had a very public spat with Nirupam over social media after the Congress’ drubbing in the 2017 BMC election.

In 2018, a section of Congress leaders from Mumbai met Mallikarjun Kharge, who was then the party’s in charge for Maharashtra, asking for Nirupam’s removal. This anti-Nirupam group itself was split. One side wanted Nirupam to be replaced by Milind Deora and the other wanted a Marathi face.

Eventually in March 2019, the Congress appointed former MP Deora, a close aide of Rahul Gandhi, as the party’s city president, a post that his father once held.

Milind Deora & Mumbai Congress’ sectarian politics

A number of Congress’ Mumbai leaders saw Deora as someone who doesn’t necessarily work with the grassroots karyakarta, but directly with the high command.

“His style of functioning, his close relations with Gandhi family. He used to directly work at that level. He used to ensure his followers get corporation tickets, but after Milind became an MP in 2004, he started spending more of his time in Delhi. In his second MP term (2009 to 2014), he used to never come to Mumbai meetings. He worked with the HNIs, the affluent voters from high-rises in his constituency and wasn’t a grassroots leader. There was some angst against him within the Mumbai Congress for this reason,” the above-mentioned former functionary says.

Deora resigned as the Mumbai Congress president in July 2019, within months of being given the role, saying he wanted to play a more national role in the party.

Since then, party leaders allege, Deora once again detached himself from the party’s functioning in the city.

“Milind Deora hardly had any involvement in Mumbai Congress. He was only on Twitter. His resignation makes him a traitor, nothing else,” Jagtap says.

Deora did not respond to ThePrint’s calls and text messages. But, the day he joined the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena, he released a statement on social media platform ‘X,’ saying the Congress is no longer what it was under his father.

“It has deviated from its ideological and organisational roots, lacking appreciation for honesty and constructive criticism. The party that once initiated India’s economic liberalisation now targets business houses as “anti national.” It has strayed from celebrating India’s diverse culture and religions, fostering division based on caste and creating a North-South divide,” his statement said.

Party members say the Congress leadership has hardly been successful in resolving this intense factionalism within the Mumbai Congress. But, there is a larger lesson now in Deora’s defection.

“There was always a clash among leaders. Those close to Delhi got good posts, while a simple man who works hard in Mumbai and doesn’t go to Delhi multiple times may never get a plum position. There is a faction that keeps hobnobbing in Delhi, and they influence the opinion of the leadership,” Chandurkar tells ThePrint.

“The leadership should give election tickets and party posts looking at the voter demographics and the work of Congress leaders. Neta tumhara, vote humara mentality (your leader, our vote) won’t do any more,” the former Mumbai Congress chief adds.

(Edited by Tony Rai)

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