NEW DELHI: Post final declaration of seats, the party saw a face-off between ex MP Sandeep Dikshit and Kanhaiya Kumar, who managed to get the ticket instead of the former.
The Congress party in Delhi had been going under pulls and pressures over the seat distribution before there was declaration of seats. Where several top leaders had tried to remove some leaders from the list of candidates, other top leaders had batted for their loyalists and facilitate them with the Lok Sabha platform.
However, after the final declaration, the party saw a face-off between ex MP Sandeep Dikshit and NSUI incharge Kanhaiya Kumar. The tussle between Dikshit and Kumar had started on the high command’s verdict on ticket distribution, where Kanhaiya Kumar was given the ticket in place of Dikshit.
In a meeting where all the ex constitutional position holders of Congress were invited, Dikshit had deliberately picked up the discourse on Kanhaiya’s inability and weak prospects to win the elections. It had set off the war of words between the two leaders.
A Congress leader said, “Kanhaiya is in his youth and he has decades of politics left in him, while as Dikshit is a spent force. He is also not someone who can win elections because if we see his recent electoral stint in 2014, he lost by around 1.9 lakh votes. Moreover, Kanhaiya has become very close to Rahul Gandhi lately, also the Gandhi scion had asserted that Kanhaiya should contest the elections. Though Kanhaiya was not interested due to the fear of losing the seat, Rahul had assured him that the result would not matter.”
Word circulating among leaders is that Ajay Maken did not like the increasing presence of Sandeep Dikshit in party affairs when it came to Delhi politics, since Maken is also from the national capital and wants to establish himself as a dominant leader without facing disagreements from rank and file (Sandeep being one of his opponents in the party).
Therefore, according to senior Congress leader in Delhi, Maken had made arrangements in such a way that Dikshit does not get any ticket from anywhere in Delhi. However, all these allegations are dismissed by leaders close to Maken as baseless.
Sandeep has had bitter rivalry with Maken. The two have been at odds during the time when Shiela Dikshit was the chief minister of Delhi and like other dynastic politicians wanted to advance her son (Sandeep) However with ambitious Maken around, who had been laying groundwork for his ascension in the party, Sandeep would dislike any kind of his involvement in party politics.
Yet a political observer said, “Sandeep Dikshit is the cause of decline for the party. His mother Sheila wanted to advance him as her heir to the Delhi leadership, but Maken was keen to get hold of everything that Delhi Congress has. Dikshit was rigid, he could not be flexible in a way that would allow him to adjust in changing political atmosphere. Fast forward to present, Sandeep is a spent force. And Maken is among the top two powerful people in Congress.”
Another leader who had first refused to contest and also back Dikshit in the electoral venture is Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee president Arvinder Singh Lovely. However, according to Congress insiders, after Arvind Kejriwal was arrested by Enforcement Directorate (ED), there was a change of mind as Lovely had presented his wish to contest the elections.
But with a bundle of leaders already shortlisted and Lovely’s weak electoral performance in 2019 (as he had lost the elections by more than 390000 votes in East Delhi against the BJP candidate Gautam Gambhir) played against his wild card entry expectations.