Actor-turned-politician Urmila Matondkar who had joined the Congress party in March this year and lost the Lok Sabha elections from North Mumbai seat to BJP’s Gopal Shetty has tendered her resignation from the party.
Actor-turned-politician Urmila Matondkar resigns from the Congress party. She states ‘My political and social sensibilities refuse to allow vested interests in the party to use me as a mean to fight petty in-house politics instead of working on a bigger goal in Mumbai Congress.’ pic.twitter.com/QJdUIswMJk
— ANI (@ANI) September 10, 2019
While resigning from the Congress party, Urmila said that her political and social sensibilities do not allow her to let vested interests in the party to use her as a mean to fight petty in-house politics. Urmila’s reason for offering resignation from the party reveals that everything is not going well in the Mumbai Congress and the party is plagued with internecine battles.
The resignation comes merely after 5 months since she joined the party. The fallout among the Congress leaders in Mumbai has come out in open, especially after the party fared disastrously in the General elections 2019. Soon after Rahul Gandhi resigned from the post of Congress President, Milind Deora too had resigned from the post of Mumbai Congress President. Another senior Congress leader Sanjay Nirupam, is at loggerheads with Milind Deora as he hailed Deora’s removal as Congress Mumbai President.
When Eknath Gaikwad was made the acting president of MRCC, Sanjay Nirupam welcomed the move stating that Deora was not able to perform and energise the Congress cadres.
On May 16, a week before the election results were out, Matondkar had written to the party leadership criticising the conduct of close associates of Sanjay Nirupam – Sandesh Kondvilkar and Bhushan Patil.
In her letter, the former Bollywood actress had shared her grievance by highlighting the failure of party leadership at the local level on coordination, organising workers at grassroots, failure to provide proper resources to her by the two campaign coordinators. The actress-politician accused the duo of showing a “total lack of coordination, honesty and efficiency, ensuring a disastrous outcome”.
Urmila Matondkar also said that the joint poll rally addressed by senior Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge and NCP chief Sharad Pawar in suburban Borivali in April was organised in an “extremely shoddy” manner, bringing huge personal embarrassment for her.
In the letter, the 45-year-old Congress politician accused Nirupam’s aide Kondvilkar of calling up her family members and asking them for money to fund her election campaign. Matondkar alleged that Kondvilkar had asked her family members to speak to Congress treasurer Ahmed Patel for release of campaign funds.
She also claimed that the close aides of Nirupam also showed disrespect to North Mumbai district Congress president Ashok Sutrale. She sought disciplinary action against Kondvilkar and Patil and demanded changes at the organisational level to ensure a better and brighter future for the party.
In her letter, she said that she managed to run a decent campaign despite such difficulties and added she had highlighted certain issues with an intention to bring positive change in the party.
In her short stint within the Congress, Urmila, in during her campaign trails was welcomed with ‘Modi, Modi‘ chants and also managed to politicise the armed forces by using Wing Commander Abhinandan’s photo for campaigning. Within days of joining Congress, she had also proclaimed that Mumbai ‘belongs‘ to Congress.
