Bollywood actor-turned-politician Urmila Matondkar on Tuesday announced that she had left the Congress party.
Matondkar was quoted by news agency ANI as saying “My political and social sensibilities refuse to allow vested interests in the party to use me as a means to fight petty in-house politics instead of working on a bigger goal in Mumbai Congress.” Matondkar was quoted by media organisations as saying she would continue to work for public welfare.
Matondkar had joined the Congress in late March and was nominated to fight the Lok Sabha polls from the Mumbai North constituency. Matondkar fought a high-profile campaign, but lost by over 4.6 lakh votes to Gopal Shetty of the BJP.
In July, a letter from Matondkar to Congress leaders, written before the announcement of election results, emerged. In the letter, Matondkar accused Sandesh Kondvilkar and Bhushan Patil, two Congress activists in her election campaign, of being dishonest and inefficient. Both Kondvilkar and Patil were considered close associates of Sanjay Nirupam, former head of the Mumbai Congress. Nirupam had contested from the Mumbai North constituency in 2014.
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Matondkar had emerged as an articulate campaigner in the Lok Sabha polls. More recently, Matondkar had criticised the Narendra Modi government for the situation in Jammu and Kashmir, claiming she had been unable to contact her husband's parents in the state for over 20 days. Matondkar is married to a Kashmiri.