New Delhi: Possible return of the Kerala Governor Sheila Dikshit to active politics has vertically divided the Delhi unit of the Congress party.
Two consecutive defeats has put the Congress party into a thinking mode as grounds are being cleared for fresh polls to break the deadlock in the Delhi state legislative assembly in December this year.
While one section is vehemently opposing Dikshit’s possible return and has even written a letter to the Congress party president Sonia Gandhi in this regard, the other section wants the Congress president to recall Dikshit without any loss of time and give her charge of the organisation in Delhi.
Dikshit, 76, was appointed Kerala governor in March this year. While she has been stoutly resisting all attempts of the Narendra Modi government to resign, the uncertain future has prompted Dikshit to indicate her keenness to return to Delhi politics.
Two days after two Congress party lawmakers of Delhi called on Sonia Gandhi with the request to recall Dikshit and hand over charge of the party in Delhi, her opponents have got active.
Her opponents squarely blamed Dikshit for the party’s defeat in December assembly elections in which the Congress party could win just eight seats in the 70-member assembly.
“It is because of Sheila Dikshit that water and electricity tariffs have gone up so much. It is because of her that the party is in such a bad shape in Delhi,” Dikshit’s opponents have written in the letter to Gandhi.
Dikshit led the Congress party to victories in 1998, 2003 and 2008 assembly elections and served as Delhi’s chief minister for 15 years. However, while she failed to guide the party to another victory, she herself lost her traditional New Delhi assembly seat to the Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal by over 17,000 votes.
Arvinder Singh Lovely, who served as a minister in the Dikshit government and was appointed as the new president of the Delhi Pradesh (state) Congress Committee after the poll rout, has left the final decision in this regard with Sonia Gandhi.
The massive defeat in the Delhi assembly elections was followed by the party’s failure to retain any of the seven Lok Sabha seats of Delhi that it had won in 2009 general elections.
Dikshit’s opponents point out that at 76 she is past her prime and it is time to groom younger generation of leadership. However, her supporters insist that while Arvinder Singh can be projected as the chief ministerial candidate, Dikshit’s services can be used in the organisation as she has the experience of running the party.
The embarrassing defeat in December Delhi assembly polls was blamed on both Dikshit and the party’s Delhi unit president Jai Prakash Agarwal. Dikshit had complained that the party failed her and did not reach out to the voters with achievements of her government. Arvinder Singh replaced both the seniors as leader of the Congress legislative party and Delhi unit president. Ironically, Agarwal was also defeated in the May Lok Sabha election.
Sources close to Dikshit say that while she was determined to block all attempts of the Modi government to get her resign as Kerala governor, the prospect of she being transferred to a small and politically insignificant state has rattled her, prompting Dikshit to express her desire to return to active police yet again in the twilight of her political career.
