Going beyond development

Born in to a political family, Sandeep Dikshit has seen politics from very close quarters, reports Atul Mathur.

Born in to a political family, Sandeep Dikshit has seen politics from very close quarters.

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His grandfather Uma Shankar Dikshit was a Union minister and governor, while mother Sheila Dikshit has been Delhi's chief minister for over a decade now.

But Dikshit chose to complete his education in the field of rural development before taking the plunge into politics.

He got the benefit of being the chief minister’s son and won his first election by a huge margin of almost 2.3 lakh votes against BJP’s sitting MP Lal Bihari Tiwari in 2004.

Seeking a second term from East Delhi parliamentary constituency, Dikshit is banking heavily on “development work done by the Congress government in East Delhi”.

“East Delhi has seen tremendous development in the past few years. About 10 ongoing road and flyover projects were initiated in my term. There were plans to shift the venue of the Commonwealth Games village to West Delhi, which I stopped. Transport facilities have improved with metro and new buses,” said Dikshit.

“I also got the campus of Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University to East Delhi and a huge habitat centre is coming up at Central Business District, Shahdara,” said Dikshit.

Doing a lot of padyatras (journey on foot) and small meetings, Dikshit is specially focussing on Jangpur and Okhla assembly constituencies, which were added to East Delhi parliamentary constituency post-delimitation.

Developing Yamuna Khadar as a huge public park and improving sanitation facilities are high on his agenda.

“East Delhi really lacks cleanliness. We really have to work on improving the sanitation system. Development of parks in East Delhi is another issue that I will take up now,” he added.