| Sanjay Nirupam, one of those Shiv Sena members who rose like a meteor in power politics with the minimum of his own investments declared today that he saw a lot of merit in secularism and said he didn't think Sonia Gandhi was a "security threat" to India at all. |
| "If I meet him (Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf during his coming visit to India), I will tell him: 'it is a good thing you came. The relationship between our countries should improve'," Nirupam said in an interview. |
| As the people he considers his constituency "" the UP Bhaiyas in Mumbai because he himself is from north India "" struggle to absorb the many issues on which Nirupam appears to have done a political about-turn, the journalist-turned-politician is still trying to find a political party that will take him after he left the Shiv Sena. |
| The reasons for Nirupam leaving the Sena are not clear at all. At one point, the young MP said his attack on Pramod Mahajan's involvement in the preferential shares issue of Reliance Infocomm was objected to by his party. |
| This had many implications: one, that there were some in his party who put corporate interest above party interest and were thus not interested in raising the "corruption" of the BJP; and two, that the fair name of a leader of another party was more important to the Shiv Sena than one of its own. |
| In his statement, Nirupam said this put him in an "intolerable" position. But it was the party, where the only leader is Bal Thackeray and no one above or below is qualified to call themselves leaders, which found the situation intolerable. |
| Just what was Nirupam saying? That he was the only intrepid soldier of the party while the rest of the party was a set of toadies? When Thackeray called him for a meeting at Matoshree, he reportedly told Nirupam that if he was hobnobbing with other political groupings, he might find life more comfortable elsewhere. |
| According to Nirupam's erstwhile colleagues, this was a way of telling Nirupam there was room for only one leader in the Shiv Sena. |
| No one in the party shed any tears for Nirupam simply because many of his colleagues found his rise threatening. He is a good orator, but it is well known that in the last government, Nirupam did his best to get Suresh Prabhu's job. |
| He succeeded only in ensuring that Prabhu lost his ministership. He never hid the fact that he had access to Thackeray, who liked his gumption and forgave him many trespasses. |
| This made Nirupam overconfident. He reportedly criticised the Centaur Juhu disinvestment deal and said the deal went right upto to the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's residence. |
| Thackeray didn't like this. In the Parliament's winter session, an inconsequential remark: "Mumbai mein koi bhi aa sakta hai (anyone can come to Mumbai) was not meant to cause the furore it did in party circles. |
| Nirupam was promoted for a political role by his friend and mentor Sanjay Raut, the editor of the Marathi Saamna. When an MP's job was offered to him, he suggested Nirupam's name. |
| The Nirupam family has a tradition of activism in the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad. But Nirupam has burnt all those boats. Rival Bhaiiya leader, Kripashankar Singh of the Congress spent a day in Delhi, persuading the party why it was not a good idea to take Nirupam. |
| Sharad Pawar has not given up the idea of forming a third-front government in the future and would not jeopardise that by adopting someone who has antagonised Thackeray. |
| What is left is Samajwadi Party or the Rashtriya Janata Dal. |
| Most politicians strike a deal with the party they want to join and then change sides. Nirupam's was an unfinished revolution. How he wriggles out of this professional crisis will be instructive to other young ambitious politicians. |
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