World | India
Rival comes calling for chief minister's blessings
Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit had a surprise visitor on Tuesday.
- By Ajay Jha, Chief Correspondent
- Published: 23:15 November 25, 2008
New Delhi: Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit had a surprise visitor on Tuesday.
Standing outside her 3 Motilal Nehru Road bungalow was the very man who, for the past five years, has wasted few opportunities to rail against her government inside the state legislature and is now on a mission to defeat her from the New Delhi Assembly constituency.
Dikshit, however, was all grace as she welcomed her Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) rival Vijay Jolly, who bent down to touch her feet to seek her blessings and cheekily asked for her vote.
Jolly was accompanied by his wife and children, besides a large posse of journalists. A smiling Dikshit put her hand over Jolly's head in a symbolic gesture that her blessings were with him although she is more or less assured of victory.
The meeting lasted for about 10 minutes. "Being younger to her, it is my right to seek her blessings," said Jolly, insisting all the same that he would give a tough fight to Dikshit.
Changed electoral map
The BJP, in its bid to get a formidable candidate to stand against the incumbent chief minister, has promised Jolly the moon. He will be made a minister if he emerges a surprise winner and, even if he were to fail in his mission, he has been promised chairmanship of the Delhi Tourism and Transportation Development Corporation, which carries all the perks of a minister, if the BJP comes to power in the state.
Incidentally, Dikshit and Jolly are among seven pairs of sitting state lawmakers who will run into each other during the elections after the recent redrawing of boundaries of all 70 assembly constituencies.
While Dikshit's Gole Market constituency ceased to exist, Jolly's Saket constituency has also disappeared from the electoral map. For Dikshit it was not the first time a rival had come to seek her blessings. Former India cricketer-turned-politician Kirti Azad had done the same during the 1998 elections when the two were locked in a battle for the Gole Market seat. Azad had then said that he had come to seek blessings of his "bua" (father's sister).
Azad's father Bhagwat Jha Azad had been a senior Congress leader who served as a federal minister and Bihar chief minister. Azad got Dikshit's blessings but lost the elections.
However, it is not that those seeking blessings of their rivals during elections have always lost. Filmstar Amitabh Bachchan got out off his car, touched the feet of veteran Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna and got his blessings when they crossed swords in Allahabad during the 1984 Lok Sabha polls. Bachchan emerged the winner.
Police stop Modi rally
The fight for the New Delhi assembly seat took another interesting turn yesterday with the Delhi Police refusing permission to Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi to hold two rallies in the constituency head of the elections on Saturday.
Modi was scheduled to address rallies at Netaji Nagar and Panchkuiya Road. Delhi Police, however, held that mandatory prior permission had not been sought for the gatherings.
Modi is scheduled to address 13 rallies in the metropolis in his bid to consolidate the pro-Hindu voters of the national capital.
Not willing to give up, Modi held a closed-door meeting with the BJP's prime ministerial candidate Lal Krishna Advani and party general secretary Arun Jaitley and the trio came up with a fix: Modi will now hold a roadshow in the New Delhi constituency for which no permission is required.
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