Receptions take up most of Sheila’s time

The Congress party workers have organised more than 150 receptions for their new leader across the city. The rounds of receptions which began in June, soon after she took over as president lasted till the end of August. Giving Dikshit little time to raise the burning issues plaguing the city.

According to a party worker: “The Congress has 80 blocks and all of them hosted a reception for Sheilaji. In some cases, there were more than one meetings at each block as every faction hosted its own reception and Sheilaji, in a bid to appease all of them, attended every function. Apart from this, there were receptions at the district level and even at the Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) level”.

Since the onset of summer, the city was plagued with a host of problems. The annual ritualistic problems of water and power shortage were compounded by dropsy deaths and onion crisis. And while Delhiites were grappling with these problems and the BJP-led government was fumbling and mumbling its way out of the crisis, the capital’s main opposition party workers were busy perfecting the art of being good hosts. So busy were they in welcoming Sheila Dikshit as the new president of the Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee (DPCC), that they forgot everything else.

A former district committee president says: “The DPCC was so busy hosting receptions for its president that they did not exploit any of these issues. The party would have been in a much more comfortable position had the Congress paid more attention to the misgovernance in the state. There were a few public meetings organised here and there, but nothing noteworthy”. Barring the outer Delhi parliamentary constituency, nowhere else have Delhiites witnessed any coordinated campaigning by the party.

Party workers point out that the office of Meira Kumar, Delhi’s lone Congress MP, is said to be flooded with requests for public meetings with Sheila Dikshit from not only her constituency but all over the Capital. But these are yet to be sorted out and a list forwarded to Dikshit for appropriate action. Even the election campaign of senior leaders has not yet been finalised. According to party sources, “Sheilaji will start active campaigning from the first week of November. At present, people are busy with Diwali festivities and then we have to finalise the allotment of tickets. Only after that is finished, will we start campaigning”.

On her part, Dikshit says: “We have held a lot of public meetings, since I took over. We held one mammoth rally on September 28 and after that I have held 80 public meetings. Out of these 40 have been held in outer Delhi and the other 40 in other areas in Delhi”.