Congress faces an existential crisis in city that was once its bastion

The party has retained its hold over a few wards, including areas with a sizeable Muslim population — Northeast Delhi’s Mustafabad, Southwest Delhi’s Aya Nagar and Southeast Delhi’s Zakir Nagar. The Congress has also won from 2020 riot-hit areas including Brijpuri, Mustafabad and Kabir Nagar. Mustafabad and Brijpuri recorded a polling percentage of more than 60% this year.

In Andrews Ganj, where Congress leader Abhishek Dutt served as the councillor for two consecutive terms, the party lost to the AAP candidate.

While losing several of the seats it has held traditionally, the Congress has made inroads into a few seats that went to the BJP and AAP in 2017 — Shastri Park and Nihal Vihar, which it has wrested from the BJP, and Chauhan Banger and Abul Fazal Enclave, where Congress has replaced the AAP. In Chauhan Banger, the Congress candidate won by a large margin of over 15,000 votes.

The Congress election pitch this year had been a return to what party leaders said was a cleaner, greener city under Dikshit. The party, which last won a majority in the MCD in 2002 and won no seat in the Assembly election in 2020, has been nearly edged out of a city that the Congress with Dikshit at the helm governed for 15 years.

In a statement issued on Wednesday, Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee President Anil Chaudhary said that the Congress fought the election based on “the progress and development achieved” during the time of the Congress government under Dikshit.

A senior Congress leader, however, pointed out that this had clearly not been enough for the party. The Congress campaign had been a muted one, but just a strong campaign also would not have sufficed, he said. “Ground work needs to be done from the beginning. The candidates should have been identified much earlier and they should have been able to work consistently on ground. It’s also about perception management. We don’t invest much in the management of the media and perception. The vote share has been coming down and that’s a wake-up call,” he added.

“What we’re doing is definitely not right and we have to admit this. We have to re-strategise. We have gone wrong somewhere and we’ll have to introspect,” said Congress leader and former councillor from Andrews Ganj Abhishek Dutt.