Baba Siddique: From watchmaker’s son to student leader to minister

Mumbai: Barely 24 hours before he was shot dead at Bandra East in suburban Mumbai, Baba Siddique shared the dais with his new political boss, deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar, while welcoming actor Sayaji Shinde to the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) on Friday. Later, he chatted with the media as they asked whether his MLA son Zeeshan was likely to join the NCP.

It is not clear who was behind Siddique’s murder but police are considering two angles. First, a real estate-slum redevelopment angle; and second, Siddique’s Bollywood connections. In a way, it also sums up why Siddique was a prominent political figure.

Let’s take a deep dive into Siddique’s past for an insight into his life, his interests and leanings.

Student Leader to Minister

Baba Siddique, whose given name was Ziauddin Siddique, had modest beginnings. His father repaired wristwatches at a stall in Fort, in South Mumbai, but a young Siddique was drawn to politics. As a teenager, he joined the National Students Union of India (NSUI), the student wing of the Congress, in 1977. He was later elected its Mumbai president, and appointed president of the Mumbai Youth Congress in 1988.

Siddique was close to Sunil Dutt, the late actor-turned-politician and Member of Parliament (MP) from Mumbai-North West, who enjoyed enormous goodwill. Siddique was a confidant of the Dutt family and was often seen with Sanjay and Priya Dutt, who became MP after her father’s death.

Siddique’s initiation into mainstream politics took place in 1992, when he was elected municipal corporator for the first time, and then once more. He became an MLA from the Bandra West assembly constituency in 1999. He served two more terms, in 2004 and 2009.

Siddique was a junior minister in the Vilasrao Deshmukh-led Congress-NCP government in 2004, heading the food and civil supplies department. He was dropped four years later. Prior to that, he also served as chairperson of the state-run Mumbai Housing Board.

Former Congress minister Suresh Shetty said, “I knew Baba Siddiqui since he was a boy. His uncle was our neighbour and he used to stay with his uncle during the vacations. In 1985, he wanted to contest the assembly polls as an independent. Sunil Dutt and I convinced him to withdraw. Instead, we promised him a ticket in the BMC elections. In 1992, there was a civic by-election due to BJP corporator Ramdas Nayak’s death. Siddique lost but won later.”

Making His Mark In Bandra

During his three consecutive terms as MLA from Bandra West, Siddique gained recognition not only in political circles but also due to his Bollywood connections. He became the go-to person for many Bollywood personalities, who needed help sorting out work-related and even personal issues.

Siddique’s iftar parties became the talk of the town after he brought the two ‘Khans of Bollywood’—Shah Rukh and Salman—together at one of these parties. Siddique, playing peacemaker, had orchestrated the patch-up between the Khans in 2013, when the two superstars of the Hindi film industry were feuding with each another. The move signalled his clout in Bollywood circles.

Siddique wore another hat – he was a prominent Muslim face for the Congress in Mumbai along with other legislators such as Naseem Khan and Amin Patel.

Real estate in Bandra has always been a high-stakes proposition for everyone connected with it. The suburb, once a quiet neighbourhood dotted with bungalows and villas, became the focus of developers in the 1990s. Soon, there was demand for pricey homes in Bandra, which by then had emerged as a happening suburb. Most of the beautiful villas were giving way to skyscrapers, and slums in some parts of the suburb were used by the builders to build more.

Siddique was considered a player in Bandra’s highly competitive real-estate sector. As a local politician, his influence in slums that had mushroomed in Bandra helped him enter the very lucrative slum redevelopment business. Later, it became a reason for investigation by the Enforcement Directorate.

Troubled Years

Siddique’s political career began to decline in 2014, when he lost the assembly elections to Mumbai BJP president, Ashish Shelar. In a couple of years, he was being investigated for his connections with slum redevelopment projects, including a probe by the Enforcement Directorate.

In the 2019 assembly elections, Siddique chose not to contest opposite Shelar. Instead, his son Zeeshan contested the polls from the Bandra East seat and won.

Things changed after Eknath Shinde pulled down the Uddhav Thackeray-led MVA government in 2022. Siddique apparently wanted to rid himself of his legal troubles, so he threw in his lot with the ruling Mahayuti alliance in February this year. Besides, he felt sidelined in the Congress, where other Muslim leaders from Mumbai such as Naseem Khan and Aslam Shaikh were gaining prominence. He had also fallen out with Dutt’s daughter and former Congress MP, Priya Dutt, a few years ago.

Among the three parties in the ruling alliance – the Shiv Sena, BJP and NCP – Siddique chose the Ajit Pawar-led NCP. Pawar was blatantly courting minority votes unlike his colleagues Eknath Shinde (Shiv Sena) and Devendra Fadnavis (BJP), who were targeting Muslims. Although the NCP did not help him get the Rajya Sabha seat he coveted, Pawar and his party colleagues projected Siddique as a Muslim face of the party. Unfortunately for him, the end came before he could prove his worth to his new mentors.

Political Implications of Siddique’s Murder

In local politics, in Bandra and Mumbai’s suburbs, Siddique will be missed. He was a prominent Muslim politician. Ajit Pawar’s NCP will, no doubt, hand Baba Siddique’s mantle to Zeeshan but it remains to be seen whether he can fill his father’s shoes.

In a quirk of fate, Siddique died at a time when the Congress is trying to get Priya Dutt to contest from Bandra West assembly seat opposite Ashish Shelar. With Siddique not in the party, Dutt could be the Congress’s best chance to reclaim a seat it hasn’t won in ten years.

However, there is larger issue to be addressed. Siddique’s is the third politician to be murdered this year. His killing is also the fourth incident of violence involving politicians in the city and the state.

* In February 2024, Ganpat Gaikwad, BJP MLA from Kalyan, opened fire on Shiv Sena local leader Mahesh Gaikwad inside a police station following a land dispute between them.

* That same month, Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Abhishek Ghosalkar was shot dead by a self-proclaimed social worker Mauris Noronha in Borivali. The incident sent shockwaves across the state as the murder was streamed live on social media.

* Earlier this month, Sachin Kurmi, a local NCP leader in Byculla, was stabbed to death in the area. On Thursday, NCP minister Chhagan Bhujbal asked the Mumbai police commissioner to investigate whether there was a political connection to Kurmi’s murder.

Opposition leaders are accusing the ruling Mahayuti alliance of a law and order breakdown, and deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, who heads home department, is facing the heat. Some have even claimed that Siddique’s murder in full public view on a city street is a grim reminder of Mumbai’s gangland killing of the 1990s.

In recent years, the real estate sector in Mumbai and surrounding areas has boomed, and everybody, right politicians to criminals, is intent on getting their share of the pie. Many elected representatives are associated with the real estate industry and friction between groups with vested interests is common. Moreover, with a high-stakes assembly election around the corner, pressure is definitely mounting.

“The recent violent incidents have put a question mark on the police department’s functioning—criminals and those with criminal tendencies are not afraid of the police. Fadnavis may find himself in a corner. He certainly has some explaining to do,” says Padmabhushan Deshpande, a political analyst.

(With inputs from Yogesh Naik)