'Mumbai Congress office just left to be locked': Sanjay Nirupam says dues worth ₹18 lakh pending; attacks Kharge, Venugopal

Sanjay Nirupam, senior leader of the Maharashtra Deputy CM Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena, recently launched a stinging attack on the grand old Congress party. In a long post on X (formerly Twitter), Nirupam highlighted the financial woes of the grand old party's Mumbai unit. 

He mentioned that the Mumbai Congress office could be closed anytime, citing unpaid rent and electricity bills. "The office rent has not been paid for years. The outstanding amount has become ₹18 lakh. The electricity bill dues have reached ₹5 lakh," Nirupam outlined in his post.

He also mentioned that the electricity distributor also took the office's meter away recently during the event of a power cut. "(FYI the power supplier in South Mumbai is BEST not Adani)," Nirupam jabbed at the grand old party. 

Furthermore, he contrasted the current situation with his tenure as the Mumbai Congress president when issues related to bill settlements were managed effectively.

He mentioned that at the time, the monthly expenditure of running the Mumbai Congress office was ₹14 lakh and this included office rent, electricity bill, and salaries of all the workers. 

He even stated that as per his information, Mumbai Congress workers have not received their salaries for the past 10 months. "Only one uncomfortable situation arose in my time when I was confronted with a hefty bill from the tea vendor. But that was overbilling. That too was settled." 

"Even during my time, the party was in the opposition and I was not even an MP. Then why has the party fallen into such a bad state today?" He added that the grand old party's leaders are busy making YouTube videos, without naming anyone.

Nirupam even went onto criticise Congress' current leadership, including Mallikarjun Kharge and KC Venugopal, and claimed that they ignored his prior warnings. The senior Shiv Sena leader even accused of outsourcing the party's operations to Shiv Sena (UBT). 

"Extremely knowledgeable people like Kharge and Venugopal kept ignoring me. The result is out today."

In the 2024 Maharashtra elections, the ruling Mahayuti won a whopping 230 out of 288 assembly seats whereas the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) could manage to win only 46 seats.

The Congress logged its most dismal electoral performance in the state in the recent past, managing to win only 16 out of the total 101 seats it contested on.