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Will Sheila continue in her post?

Gaurav Vivek Bhatnagar

CM accused of not helping party candidates in MCD poll

NEW DELHI: Following the defeat of the Congress in the Municipal Corporation of Delhi elections this past weekend it now seems that Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee president Ram Babu Sharma may be asked to step down from the party post. This is most likely to happen after the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections are over. But more than Mr. Sharma's fate, the question uppermost in the minds of party workers and leaders alike is whether Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit will continue in her post.

There are two theories doing the rounds. One view is that the party high command is angry that Ms. Dikshit did not campaign whole-heartedly for the party during the MCD polls. "Even when she finally turned out just four or five days before campaigning ended, it was on the high command's insistence,'' claimed a senior leader.

Also, Ms. Dikshit has been accused of not helping Congress candidates fight the polls. "The Congress candidates fought with their hands tied behind their backs. On the one hand the DPCC did not even provide a copy of the party manifesto to them while on the other no logistics support was forthcoming from Ms. Dikshit's camp either,'' he added.

Another reason why Ms. Dikshit is also being targeted is that by stating that the MCD polls were not a referendum on the Master Plan, she went against the party line. "It had been decided that the polls would be fought by projecting the Congress as the party that regularised over 1,500 colonies and brought the new Master Plan for Delhi to provide relief to the people from sealing and demolition. But by stating that it was not a referendum on the Master Plan or the performance of the Delhi Government, Ms. Dikshit sought to impress that the issue of price rise was to blame. This is exactly what was sought to be avoided as the U.P. elections are on.''

Incidentally, Mr. Sharma has also been insisting that Ms. Dikshit should have no reason to feel upset about distribution of election tickets since "we had both decided on the names together''. And since the names had been short-listed on the recommendations of the MLAs and Members of Parliament, he claimed that everyone was responsible for the party's loss.

But the Chief Minister has withstood such pressures well in the past and survived. This time too she insists she had forewarned that better coordination was needed between the DPCC and the Delhi Govt. if the Congress was to do well in the polls.

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