“Baba Siddiqui to join Nationalist Congress Party”: Maharashtra Deputy CM Ajit Pawar

Pune (Maharashtra) [India], February 9 (ANI): Baba Siddiqui, a former Maharashtra minister who resigned from the Congress party on Thursday, will join the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) on Saturday, Deputy CM Ajit Pawar said.

Pawar also said that some more leaders will join the NCP on Sunday.

While talking to the reporters here on Friday, the Deputy CM said, “Baba Siddique will join NCP on February 10, evening, and on February 11, some more will join the party.”

Siddiqui, the former Maharashtra minister who resigned from the Congress party on Thursday, 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 being said 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.

Baba Siddique had been associated with the grand old party for 48 years.

After Siddique’s resignation, Mumbai Congress chief Varsha Eknath Gaikwad hit out at him and said that his resignation would not make any difference to the grand old party.

“People are changing parties like clothes. He has gone for his own selfish reasons. What to say about those who are not of his party and ideas? Today, when Congress needed him the most, he left Congress. However, people come and go in Congress. Our party is an idea, and ideas never die. The Congress party will work more strongly in the coming days,” she said.

Siddique was an MLA for three consecutive terms in 1999, 2004 and 2009, and had also served as a minister of state for food and civil supplies, labour and FDA, (2004-08) and had also served as a municipal corporator earlier for two consecutive terms (1992-1997).

He has also served as the chairperson and senior vice president of the Mumbai Regional Congress Committee and the parliamentary board of the Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee.