Ex-MP sex tape: Somaiya finds little support within party
Leader of opposition in the legislative council Ambadas Danve handed over a pen drive that contained 8 different videos allegedly featuring Somaiya in compromising positions to the presiding officer of the legislative council
Mumbai: Forty eight hours after his purported sex-tape was aired by a Mumbai-based television channel, Kirit Somaiya finds himself isolated within his own party.
The former MP from Mumbai North-East who has fashioned himself as Mumbai’s anti-corruption crusader--running high-decibel campaigns against past and present political opponents like Ajit Pawar, Chhagan Bhujbal, Anil Parab, Uddhav Thackeray and Hasan Mushrif-- now stars in a sleazy video and none of his party colleagues have come to his defence.
On Tuesday, deputy home minister Devendra Fadnavis ordered a police probe after leader of opposition in the legislative council Ambadas Danve handed over a pen drive that contained 8 different videos allegedly featuring Somaiya in compromising positions to the presiding officer of the legislative council. Danve further alleged that Somaiya had blackmailed and coerced the women who are part of the videos for his sexual gratification.
Somaiya has asked the police examine the veracity of the tape and say there was no coercion involved. But while the probe will no doubt take its own time, social media has been flooded with memes that would mortify a thinner-skinned person.
The alleged sex-tape has put the BJP in a quandary for while Somaiya is no longer an MP, he does enjoy out-sized clout on account of the corruption campaigns that he has been running against their opponents. Most party leaders declined to comment to the video that was aired, with one senior leader fretting over the damaging implications of the video. “We have been monitoring the reactions among the people and on the social media and think it’s better not to comment. What he did is not something in the interest of the party. This is a personal issue in which he may have got trapped. Let the probe report come out,” he said not wanting to be quoted.
Maharashtra BJP’s vice president Madhav Bhandari said, “Let the investigation be completed, we do not have any stand to take at this juncture.”
Somaiya, 69, a chartered accountant by education, shot to fame after he exposed Ponzi schemes like the ones run by CU marketing in the early 1990s. He is credited with bringing Maharashtra Protection of Interest of Depositors (In Financial Establishments) Act in 1998, which was later adopted nationally during the Modi government’s first term. Buoyed by his initial success, Somaiya hired a team of forensic auditors to dig up dirt on rivals’ benami properties, shell companies, cross ownership through shell companies and dodgy land transactions. He stands accused of sometimes functioning like an unguided missile
After he was denied a party ticket in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, allegedly at the behest of the Shiv Sena, he began targeting the Thackeray family calling them the Mafiosis of Bandra. Several people within the BJP believe that that was the genesis of the souring of relations between the Shiv Sena and the BJP.
Much to his dismay though most politicians he went after in his muckraking zeal are now in the BJP camp. They range from Narayan Rane, Ajit Pawar, Chhagan Bhujbal to Hasan Mushrif. All of them are minister in the BJP government either in the centre or in the state.
In fact, after the NCP rebels were inducted in the state government, Somaiya scrupulously avoided the media. But the spotlight loves him even if he is the one squirming under it this time around.
