Former Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit is contemplating to withdraw from the state Assembly election campaign.
According to an India Today report, Dikshit is upset at being systematically sidelined and not being consulted by those in charge of running the party’s affairs at the centrestage.
Earlier, she was being considered as the chief ministerial face of the party in the upcoming election. However, she has almost disappeared from the campaign. Her absence at Rahul Gandhi’s rally in Bahraich was noticeable.
The report says that Dikshit feels being sidelined in the matters related to the campaign as she was not consulted about the alliance with the Samajwadi Party for the campaign.
While Congress, on one hand, is inching closer to stitching up an electoral alliance with the Samajwadi Party, Sheila Dikshit, who earlier as the party’s face in UP, now finds herself sidelined.
“I did not ask to be sent to Uttar Pradesh, the party leadership appealed me to take up the assignment in order to help the party. I was also given to understand that Priyanka Gandhi would campaign vigorously before and during the elections,” India Today quoted Sheila Dikshit as telling a UP leader.
According to the report, she is not only miffed for being kept in the dark about the negotiations with the SP, but also the way the party has gone about the whole thing which has made her position extremely indefensible. She has even disappeared from the party’s posters and the campaign.
If Congress manages to work out an alliance with the Samajwadi Party, it would mean that UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav will be the face of the alliance and not her.
On the other hand, Sheila Dikshit’s name is in the same “Sahara Diaries” that Rahul Gandhi used to accuse PM Modi of corruption. She has to rubbish the diaries in order to defend herself, but consequently it seems to have created differences with the entire campaign hat Rahul Gandhi has been trying to build against the Prime Minister.
