New Delhi: Welcoming Congress' move to make Ajay Maken its face for Delhi Assembly polls, former Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit today said nobody asked her to step aside and she herself conveyed to the party leadership about her decision to keep away from electoral politics. Describing Maken as an experienced administrator, she hoped that he will be able to help the party in gaining people's support in the February 7 assembly polls.
When referred to Maken's comments about her yesterday that “every person has an era of glory which also comes to an end,” the former Chief Minister responded by saying that it was she who had apprised the Congress leadership of her decision not to contest elections again.
“Nobody can deny the fact that Sheila Dikshit government was in power for 15 years in Delhi. Nobody can also deny that immediately after returning from Kerala, I told the leadership about my decision not to take a plunge in electoral politics again. Nobody had asked me to do so,” Dikshit told PTI. Maken and Dikshit are not known to have a cordial relationship with each other.
Asked whether Maken will be able to turn around Congress' fortune in the polls, Dikshit said, “I hope my party does well in the polls. Only time will tell whether he would be successful or not,” the 76-year-old leader said.
The former Union minister was appointed chairman of the party's 101-member campaign committee for Delhi Assembly polls yesterday.
“He is experienced as he was a minister in Delhi government as well as in the central government,” Dikshit, who was chief minister of Delhi from 1998 to 2013, said.
The Congress had suffered a severe drubbing in the assembly polls in 2013 under Dikshit's leadership and managed to win only eight out of 70 seats.
Dikshit, herself, had faced an ignominious defeat in New Delhi constituency by a margin of over 25,000 votes at the hands of Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal.
