The assassination in Mumbai of high-profile NCP leader Baba Ziauddin Siddique is a sad commentary on the law and order situation in a progressive state like Maharashtra, which boasts of having the best police force in India.
What is more shocking is that the threat to Siddique’s life was no secret. He had been provided Y-category security. The audacity displayed by the gangsters in shooting a senior politician in the heart of India’s financial capital also raises a question mark about governance in the state.
A native of Gopalganj in Bihar, Siddique was a politician with a happy-go-lucky persona, who easily made friends across party lines. A socialite from Bandra West, the constituency he represented three terms (2000 to 2009), Siddique rose up the political ladder, from being a Youth Congress activist to councillor, MLA to state minister.
He was known for throwing lavish iftar parties at which the who’s who of Bollywood, industry and politics were guests. Siddique was instrumental in ending the dispute between Bollywood stars Salman Khan and Shahrukh Khan and bringing them together again.
Siddique’s assassination shows the hollowness of the ruling Mahayuti alliance’s hollow promises about a zero-tolerance approach to crime in Maharashtra.
Once upon a time, Mumbai was notorious for gang wars — a feature which, at times, extended to an unsavoury nexus between crime and politics. Following Siddique’s death, the police are closely watching the role of the Lawrence Bishnoi gang, given the politician’s closeness with Salman Khan, who is also a target.
Siddique, who joined the NCP in February this year, ending his 48-year- long association with the Congress party, was going to be one of the star campaigners in mobilising Muslim votes for the Mahayuti, especially Deputy CM Ajit Pawar’s faction, which is struggling to keep its secular credentials intact, despite partnering with saffron parties — the BJP and Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena. In Siddique, the BJP and Shiv Sena had envisaged a dilution of Muslim anger, at least in those few constituencies where their individual candidates have cordial relations with minorities.
With the state going to polls next month, Siddique’s killing casts a shadow on the Shinde-led Mahayuti’s tall claims of good governance. Importantly, it badly dents the image of Deputy CM and Home Minister Devendra Fadnavis, who has already come under severe attack from the Opposition regarding law-and-order failure in the state. More so, when he is being projected within the BJP as the unchallenged leader — perhaps, even the next CM — if the alliance is voted to power.
In a fiercely contested election for 288 Assembly seats, with a three-party coalition on either side, the Mahayuti versus the Maha Vikas Aghadi — every incident, big or small, is going to matter for Maharashtra.
shubhangi.khapre@expressindia.com