Mumbai, February 10: Former Maharashtra minister Baba Ziauddin Siddique, popularly known as Baba Siddique, joined the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) on Saturday, February 10. Baba Siddique, who quit the Congress party earlier this week, joined the NCP in presence of NCP chief and Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar, Praful Patel and other party leaders.
Baba Siddique, who was a party loyalist through thick and thin for some 48 years, had announced his resignation on X (formerly Twitter) on February 8. "I joined the Indian National Congress Party as a young teenager and it has been a significant journey lasting 48 years… There’s a lot I would have liked to express but as they say, some things are better left unsaid," he had declared in his sign off post.
Baba Siddique Joins NCP:
Baba Siddique is the second senior Mumbai Congress leader to leave the party in the last one month after former Union minister Milind Deora joined the Chief Minister Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena in January. Siddique's son Zeeshan is a Congress MLA from the city, but he has not quit the grand old party till now.
A prominent Muslim face of the Mumbai Congress, Baba Siddique served as a minister when the Congress-NCP coalition was in power in Maharashtra. After quitting the Congress party, he had praised Ajit Pawar, saying leaders like him stand with every community.
"Be it the Muslim community or any other community, people like Ajit Pawar have always taken everyone along," Baba Siddique had said in response to a question about the Muslim vote bank. Notably, the Ajit Pawar faction of the NCP, recognized as the real NCP by the Election Commission earlier this week, is part of the ruling coalition in the state.
