Congress' Urmila Matondkar regrets 'unfortunate' leak of her letter criticising close aides of Sanjay Nirupam

Mumbai: Actress-turned-politician, who had unsuccessfully contested the Lok Sabha elections from Mumbai North seat as a Congress candidate, Tuesday took a dim view of her letter criticising close aides of senior party leader Sanjay Nirupam getting “leaked”. [caption id=“attachment_6964151” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  File photo of Urmila Matondkar. AP[/caption] In the letter addressed to the party leadership, Matondkar had criticised the conduct of Sandesh Kondvilkar and Bhushan Patil, close associates of Nirupam, a former Mumbai Congress president, during campaigning. The letter is dated 16 May, a week before the Lok Sabha election results were announced, and addressed to Milind Deora, Mumbai Regional Congress Committee (MRCC) chief. Deora announced his resignation from the post-Sunday, taking moral responsibility for the party’s defeat in the elections. Deora, a former MP, had succeeded his political bete noire Nirupam as the president of Mumbai Congress ahead of the elections. “It’s extremely unfortunate that a confidential letter containing privileged communication was made public,” Matondkar said in a statement. Admitting that there are issues to be sorted out in every political party, Matondkar said she had joined the Congress with no personal agenda but to serve the country. “I had addressed this letter to the Mumbai Congress president with the sole intention to bring about betterment in the party. It is extremely significant to note that this letter was written way before the election results were announced and even before the exit polls,” she stated. In the missive, she had highlighted the failure of party leadership at the local level on coordination, mobilising workers at grassroots, failure to provide proper resources to her by the two campaign coordinators. In a veiled reference, Nirupam had blamed Deora for making Matondkar’s letter public. Matondkar had lost to BJP veteran Gopal Shetty by a margin of 4,65,247 votes.