Kirit Somaiya of Maharashtra BJP, who has often hogged the limelight for his apparent crusade against corruption, has taken a muted stance off late following a spate of graft charges against his own party leaders and subsequent lack of backing from the party he needed to continue his crusade.
A raft of Maharashtra leader like Ajit Pawar, Hasan Mushrif, Sunil Tatkare, Chhagan Bhujbal, Narayan Rane, and Kripashankar Singh have associated themselves with the BJP in some way or the other after facing corruption charges.
Miffed by the party’s accommodative stance regarding the aforementioned leaders, earlier this week, Somaiya rejected his appointment to the party’s campaign committee. In a letter addressed to Raosaheb Danve, head of the Maharashtra BJP’s election management committee for assembly polls, Somaiya said he was already doing a lot of work as an “ordinary” party worker and he found it “insulting” that he was not even asked before being appointed to the campaign committee.
“Since 2019 I have been working as a common karyakarta of the party, shouldering many responsibilities and doing a lot of work, so what is the point of the post now?” he said. “Give it to someone else whose capacity to work will increase because of the post,” he added.
Somaiya is a two-time former MP from the Mumbai North East constituency with a taste for activism.
A chartered accountant with a PhD from Mumbai University in Business Policy and Administration, he chose to focus his brand of politics on investigating rival politicians for financial misappropriation.
His team would gather official documents and file Right to Information (RTI) requests to gather ammunition and Somaiya would make a splash with his press conferences about his findings, following them up with complaints to the relevant authorities.
In the 2017 Mumbai civic elections, which saw the undivided Shiv Sena and BJP lead acrimonious campaigns against each other despite being allies at the state level, Somaiya was at the forefront of the BJP’s crusade.
After the 2014 Maharashtra assembly polls, which the two parties contested separately, the Thackeray-led party became a regular target of Somaiya’s barbs.
Back then, Somaiya, in a not-so-veiled remark, alleged that the Shiv Sena was being run by a powerful mafia led by a “saheb” in Bandra. The Thackerays’ residence, Matoshree, is in Bandra. He even alleged that Sena leaders were using a web of shell companies to launder kickbacks earned from Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) contracts.
The rivalry reached a peak when Shiv Sena workers allegedly attacked Somaiya during Dussehra celebrations. He had then written to the then Mumbai Police chief alleging there was a plot to kill him.
Ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha and Maharashtra assembly polls, relations between then-allies BJP and the Thackeray-led Shiv Sena were already tempestuous. The BJP was still hopeful of forging an alliance without letting the Shiv Sena extract the pound of flesh that it seemed keen to. Among the stumbling blocks to the alliance talks was Somaiya and his possible candidature, sources from both parties had told ThePrint at the time.
On 18 February 2019, as the BJP and Thackeray-led Shiv Sena formalised their alliance for two elections, Somaiya’s future took a bleak turn.
That year, the sitting MP was denied renomination and replaced with Manoj Kotak.
On Tuesday, in his letter to Danve, Somaiya said, “… BJP leaders directed me to leave the joint press conference because of Uddhav Thackeray’s insistence. I took the responsibility of exposing various corrupt practices of the then Uddhav Thackeray government and also survived three near-fatal attacks, but I did my duty.”
Speaking to the media a day later, Somaiya said he has shown that the weight of an ordinary worker is more than leaders such as Fadnavis and Maharashtra BJP president Chandrashekhar Bawankule.
Bawankule said, “Kirit Somaiya ji is our senior leader, but the party leadership doesn’t ask anyone before giving any responsibility. When I was made state president I was not asked either.”
Somaiya said he used such strong words “only because of the differences over his appointment to the campaign committee and the party was not initially willing to listen”.
He continued to attack Uddhav and other Shiv Sena leaders even after the 2019 state polls, raising questions over the landholdings of the former’s wife, Rashmi Thackeray, in Alibaug near Mumbai, alleging these were not mentioned in Uddhav’s election affidavit.
By then, the Uddhav-led Shiv Sena was part of the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) — comprised the undivided Shiv Sena, undivided Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), and the Congress — and was a clear rival of the BJP.
Over the course of time, many of the leaders against whom Somaiya levelled corruption charges either joined BJP or became its ally. These include Narayan Rane and Kripashankar Singh who left the Sena and the Congress respectively and formally joined BJP.
Others who made the switch are Ajit Pawar, Mushrif, Bhujbal, Tatkare, who are now part of the NCP (Ajit Pawar), and Ravindra Waikar, an MP of Shiv Sena (Eknath Shinde). Both parties are part of the ruling Mahayuti alliance along with the BJP.
Meanwhile, in July this year, a video allegedly showing Somaiya in a compromising position had gone viral on social media, prompting the former MP to file an FIR against a TV news channel for allegedly showing it.
Somaiya was also accused of misappropriating funds collected in 2013 in the name of saving the decommissioned naval aircraft carrier INS Vikrant. Mumbai Police’s Economic Offences Wing ordered a closure report in the case, but a local Mumbai court last month said fresh investigation was needed.
DyCM Fadnavis, in response to claims that leaders facing corruption allegations were associating with the BJP, had said that the alliance was a political arrangement and did not have any bearing on any corruption charges against leaders and that investigators will do their job.
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