Urmila Matondkar is Congress candidate from Mumbai North

Janjivan Bureau / New Delhi : Bollywood actress Urmila Matondkar’s on Wednesday joined Congress and will be teh party’s candidate from Mumbai North Lok Sabha constituency.
Mumbai’s six Lok Sabha constituencies will vote on April 29 along with 17 others in the state’s fourth phase of polling.
Matondkar’s rival is Bharatiya Janata Party incumbent MP Gopal Shetty in the constituency that was once regarded a BJP bastion.
However, Bollywood actor Govinda (Ahuja) had earned the title of ‘giant-killer’ in 2004 when – in a major upset – he trounced the former Petroleum Minister Ram Naik, the current Uttar Pradesh Governor.
Naik had faced a second consecutive defeat in 2009 at the hands of Nirupam, who was defeated in 2014 by Shetty during the BJP-wave which catapulted Narendra Modi as Prime Minister.
The name of Matondkar, 45, married to a Kashmiri, MA Mir, was doing rounds since the past few days as the Congress grappled for an effective counter to the BJP.
She started her career as a child star aged seven in a Marathi film, ‘Zaakol’ (1980), and later her first role in Bollywood in the Shashi Kapoor-Rekha starrer ‘Kalyug’ (1981).
But, it was the highly-acclaimed Shekhar Kapur-directed film, ‘Masoom’ (1983) that catapulted her to fame as a child actress and significantly boosted her film career.
Later, she worked with some of the biggest actors in major films like ‘Dacait’, ‘Bade Ghar Ki Beti’, ‘Narasimha’, ‘Chamatkar’, ‘Aa Gale Lag Jaa’ (paired opposite Jugal Hansraj, the child co-star of ‘Masoom’), ‘Rangeela’, ‘Indian’, ‘Judaai’, ‘Daud’, ‘Satya’, ‘Kaun’, ‘Mast’, ‘Dillagi’, ‘Khoobsurat’, ‘Jungle’, ‘Pyaar Tune Kya Kiya’, ‘Ek Hasina Thi’, ‘Om Jai Jagadeesh’, ‘Bhoot’, ‘Pinjar’, ‘Maine Gandhi Ko Nahi Maara’ and ‘Speed’.
Besides, she has acted in Marathi and South Indian language films and several television serials.