Congress fails to broker peace within its Mumbai unit

Mumbai: It seems that the Congress high command has been unable to bring truce within the Mumbai unit of the party with two warring factions — one led by city Congress chief Sanjay Nirupam and the other by senior leader Gurudas Kamat — unwilling to listen to reason.

In the last one week, two Congress senior leaders — Bhupinder Singh Hooda and Shashi Tharoor — visited the city in a desperate bid to resolve the tension that has been brewing within the party’s Mumbai unit for several months now and broker peace. However, they both had to return empty-handed.

Trusted aide of the Gandhi family, Mr Tharoor, was in Mumbai on Monday for inauguration of the party’s mini-manifesto by Mr Nirupam. Releasing the Congress’ ‘chargesheet’ on the Sena-BJP alliance in BMC, he steered clear of making direct comments on the feud within the Congress. “We are all friends. The leadership is aware of the issues that have come up within the party. It is the responsibility of the party general secretary to sort these issues,” is all he said.

Mr Nirupam too preferred to be discreet and simply said, “It is an internal issue of the party. Our first priority is to remove the corrupt Sena-BJP combine from power in the BMC. Other things will be taken care of later.”

Before Mr Tharoor, former Haryana CM, Mr Hooda, was sent to Mumbai by the party high command to solve the crisis within the party. Just a couple of days after his departure however, former leader of the opposition, Devendra Amberkar  joined Sena. While doing so, he made a scathing attack on Mr Nirupam for his “autocratic” behaviour.

Mr Amberkar is the seventh corporator to quit Congress ahead of the BMC polls. A senior Congress leader lamented that the party leadership was not serious about ending the dispute. “It’s a battle of survival for the party in BMC. But sadly, nobody seems to be bothered,” he said.