Twitter spats among Congress leaders galore after Delhi poll debacle

The public spat is unusual for Congress leaders, many of whom keep personal equations away from the public eye.

Dipping electoral fortunes is raising the temperatures within the ranks of Congress leaders, which is evident from some of the public spats that have taken place since the party registered a disastrous defeat in Delhi. The Congress did not win a single seat second time in a row; it was in power in Delhi for three consecutive terms under Sheila Dikshit.

The Delhi Congress office wore a deserted look after the results of the Assembly elections were announced on February 11. (Sushil Kumar/HT Photo)

Milind Deora and Ajay Maken

Both the leaders had a public meltdown on Twitter late Sunday and early Monday over Deora’s support of Aam Aadmi Party’s win. He tweeted a video of Arvind Kejriwal and said that AAP was running a “fiscally prudent” government in Delhi, and it doubled its revenues while maintaining a revenue surplus in the last five years. Maken, not taking to it kindly, said that Deora could leave the party if he wishes to but he should not peddle “half-baked fact”, and went on to list stats from Delhi government under Congress, in which Maken was a minister.

Things took an ugly turn when Deora accused Maken of undermining former chief minister Sheila Dikshit, and said that if instead of advocating an alliance with AAP, Maken had highlighted Sheila’s achievements, perhaps Congress would have been in power.

The public spat is unusual for Congress leaders, many of whom keep personal equations away from the public eye. Deora has been seemingly unhappy with the party, speaking against the party’s moves in both Maharashtra and in Delhi. For the usually reticent Maken, this was a rare outburst.

Sharmistha Mukherjee and P Chidambaram

Soon after the party’s defeat, Delhi Congress leader Sharmistha Mukherjee took on party veteran P Chidambaram on Twitter after he tweeted in support of AAP’s win. Chidambaram tweeted that in AAP’s win, “bluff and bluster” has lost, and said he salutes the people of Delhi for setting an example. This angered Mukherjee who replied to him asking whether the Congress has outsourced the task of defeating BJP to state parties, and if that is the case, then state units of the Congress should then “close shop”, she said.

The outburst is layered with context if one looks at the relationship that Chidambaram shared with Mukerjee’s father, former president Pranab Mukherjee. By the latter’s own admission, the relationship was a strained one. It is also quite rare for a Congress leader to take a public potshot at a senior leader.

PC Chacko and Pawan Khera

The Delhi defeat has opened a can of worms inside the Congress’s Delhi unit, as state in-charge PC Chacko and Pawan Khera, too, having a bit of a Twitter run-in. Soon after the defeat, Chacko sought to pass off blame for the defeat to Dikshit, and told reporters that the downfall of the Congress started in 2013 when Dikshit was the chief minister, and the party never recovered. This led to a public outburst from two leaders, Milind Deora and Pawan Khera. Deora said that it was “unfortunate” to blame her after her death. Khera, who was Dikshit’s political secretary too, took on Chacko.

He laid out data and said that in 2013 when the Congress lost to AAP, its vote share in Delhi was 24.55%. “Sheila ji was not involved in 2015, when the vote share slipped to 9.7%. In 2019, when she was back in charge, the vote share came up to 22.46%,” he wrote.