MUMBAI: The internal rift in the Mumbai Congress is out in public as senior minority leaders accuse the party of ignoring Muslim candidates. The Congress party is contesting 17 out of the 48 Lok Sabha seats in Maharashtra in alliance with the Shiv Sena (UBT) and the NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar) as part of the opposition-led Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) alliance. 

Well-known Muslim leader from Mumbai Muhammed Arif 'Naseem' Khan has stepped down from the party's campaign committee, expressing displeasure over the party not nominating any Muslim leader in the state. He wrote a letter to party chief Mallikarjun Kharge stating that he wouldn't campaign for the Lok Sabha elections as the Opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) bloc had not fielded a Muslim candidate.

"From a total 48 Lok Sabha seats in Maharashtra, MVA has not nominated a single Muslim candidate in Maharashtra," he wrote expressing his displeasure, further saying that many Muslim organisations, leaders and also party workers from all over Maharashtra were expecting the Congress to nominate at least one candidate from the minority community, but unfortunately this has not happened.

Notably, Muhammed Arif Khan who had contested the 2019 assembly elections from Chandivali in Mumbai, where he lost by 409 votes, was in the race for a ticket from Mumbai North Central, but the party chose Mumbai Congress president Varsha Gaikwad for the constituency. 

Earlier in February another very influential Muslim leader from Bandra in the Western Suburbs and former Maharashtra minister Baba Siddique had quit the Congress party after being associated with it for nearly five decades days after former Mumbai Congress chief Milind Deora joined Chief Minister Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena. Siddique later joined NCP in the presence of party chief and Maharashtra Deputy CM Ajit Pawar, in Mumbai.

Siddique said that he has moved on as he was 'not needed' in the grand old party anymore. "I had to take a decision and I have taken a decision. When you don't understand something and it doesn't improve despite saying again and again, you need to understand that you are not needed anymore and you should move on. So, I have moved on," Baba Siddique said. Speaking to reporters on the day of joining the NCP he said that it is better to step aside when things are not done despite keeping forth your views time and again.