Who is Sanjay Nirupam, who quit Maharashtra Congress ahead of elections

The Congress in Maharashtra expelled senior party leader Sanjay Nirupam on Wednesday (April 3) for “indiscipline and anti-party activities” after he made remarks against Shiv Sena (UBT), a Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) ally, over seat-sharing talks for the Lok Sabha polls.

Nirupam had also issued a one-week ultimatum to the Congress while staking a claim on the Mumbai North West constituency, the seat he lost in the 2019 elections. However, Uddhav Thackeray's Shiv Sena declared its candidate, Amot Kirtikar, on the Lok Sabha seat and other Mumbai constituencies. Nirupam was defeated in the last general elections by Amol’s father, Gajanan Kiritkar, by over 2.6 lakh votes.

Now, speculations are rife that he may join the Shiv Sena led by Chief Minister Eknath Shinde. It will be a homecoming of sorts if Nirupam indeed returns to the Sena fold, as he started his political career with the Shiv Sena led by its founder Bal Thackeray in 1990s.

Journalist-turned-politician

Born in 1965 and hailing from Rohtas in Bihar, Nirupam started his career as a journalist in 1986, but his tryst with Mumbai began in 1988 when he got employed with the Jansatta, the sister publication of The Indian Express.

Interestingly, a movie buff and a huge fan of Bollywood actor Dev Anand, Nirupam along with another writer, Ranbir Pushp, also penned the story for the megastar’s Return of Jewel Thief (1996), the failed sequel to classic Jewel Thief (1967).

While working in Loksatta, he came in contact with Sanjay Raut, also a journalist, who is now Shiv Sena (UBT) spokesperson and the party’s Rajya Sabha MP. When Raut switched to Saamana (the Shiv Sena’s mouthpiece), he got in touch with Nirupam, and told him that the party is looking for a journalist to head its Hindi mouthpiece - Dopahar ka Saamana, which was seen as Bal Thackeray’s bid to reach out to Mumbai’s Hindi-speaking population following the 1992 Bombay riots.

Subsequently, Nirupam joined Dopahar ka Saamana as its executive editor in 1993, and it was just the beginning of a meteoric rise that his career witnessed in the coming years. The Shiv Sena founder sent him to the Rajya Sabha in 1996. However, his political innings in the Shiv Sena came to an end in 2005, after which he joined the Congress. He was soon appointed as the general secretary of the Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee (MPCC).

Declining political graph

Nirupam was elected as the MP from North Mumbai Lok Sabha constituency in 2009 when he defeated senior BJP leader Ram Naik by a thin margin of around 6,000 votes. However, he lost to BJP’s Gopal Shetty in 2014 by a whopping 4.46 lakh votes. The decline in his political graph continued as he resigned as the Mumbai Congress chief following the party’s rout in the 2017 Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) elections.

Nirumpam made no bones of his strong reservation against the Congress move to join hands with the Shiv Sena in 2020 to form the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA). He also felt that the Congress should not give in to Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena’s demands while holding seat-sharing talks with it for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.