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Nawab Malik — From scrap dealer to fire-brand leader
Malik, 62, is a Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader, five-term MLA from Mumbai, and as a minister in the MVA government in the state, holds portfolios such as minority affairs, auqaf and skill development
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Nawab Malik is one of the most well-known faces in Maharashtra politics currently, mainly thanks to his vociferous criticism of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its government at the Centre.
Malik, 62, is a Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader, five-term MLA from Mumbai, and as a minister in the MVA government in the state, holds portfolios such as minority affairs, auqaf and skill development. In his tenure as MLA, he has represented two constituencies — Nehru Nagar and Anushakti Nagar — in Mumbai.
Once a scrap dealer, Malik began his political career as a political activist back in 1979, when he protested against a fee hike by the University of Mumbai. He went on to join Sanjay Vichar Manch floated by Maneka Gandhi, late Sanjay Gandhi’s wife. He contested elections for the first time in 1984 against Congress stalwart Gurudas Kamat and got less than 3,000 votes from Mumbai North-East Lok Sabha constituency.
But he continued to climb up the ladder due to the clout he built in the Kurla area in Mumbai. In the meanwhile, he joined Congress for a brief period, and later joined Samajwadi Party and contested the Assembly elections from Nehru Nagar constituency in 1995 but lost to Shiv Sena’s Suryakant Mahadik. A year later, bypoll was declared on the seat after Mahadik’s election was set aside by the Supreme Court and Malik got elected as an MLA for the first time in 1996.
He was re-elected from the seat in the 1999 assembly elections. He became a minister of state after Samajwadi Party decided to become a part of the coalition government led by Congress and NCP. Later, he left the party to join NCP and was handed the labour portfolio.
He, along with three other ministers, faced corruption charges by social activist Anna Hazare and subsequently had to resign after the Justice PB Sawant Commision probing the corruption charges passed strictures against him in 2005. Malik maintained that the decisions favouring the private developer in the Jariwala Chawl in Mahim was taken by the erstwhile Shiv Sena-BJP government. The then chief minister Manohar Joshi and deputy chief minister Gopinath Munde had made these recommendations in writing.
He was re-inducted in the state cabinet in 2008 and again made the labour minister. He could not get a place in the ministerial council after the Congress and NCP alliance again formed the government in 2009.
In 2014, Malik lost the state assembly elections from Anushakti Nagar constituency against Shiv Sena candidate Tukaram Kate by a margin of 1,007 votes.
Fluent in Marathi, Malik impressed party bosses as spokesperson by launching an attack on Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) after the Devendra Fadnavis-led BJP government came to power. Last year, he launched a scathing attack on the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) and its zonal director Sameer Wankhede over a drug bust case involving Aryan Khan, son of actor Shah Rukh Khan.
Following the allegations, a special team of NCB and Mumbai police started investigations independently.
Malik further claimed that Wankhede is a Muslim but secured the IRS (Indian Revenue Service) job in the Scheduled Caste (SC) category using his father’s old identity, who converted to Islam before marrying Wankhede’s mother Zaheda Bano. He had also released birth and marriage certificates of Wankhede to corroborate his claim. He has accused Fadnavis of shielding drug cartels during his regime and protecting a fake currency racket.
Malik also made a series of serious allegations against top BJP leaders in the state, including former chief minister Devendra Fadnavis.
