The severe infighting in Delhi Congress over distribution of tickets reached the All India Congress Committee (AICC) office at Akbar Road on Monday. Over a dozen demonstrations were held against sitting MLAs and leaders said to have made the list of 40 cleared by the screening committee.
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A group of protesters brought with itself a 20-point ‘chargesheet’ against an MLA from the outer Delhi area. Another group waved placards against an MLA from east Delhi. A potentially serious clash between two groups owing allegiance to rival claimants for the same seat was averted after some senior leaders intervened.
Many of the protesters who were seen at the AICC HQ had visited the homes of Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit and Delhi Congress chief Chaudhary Prem Singh earlier in the day. By evening, there were reports that their efforts had borne fruit: sources said some candidatures which had been “almost finalised” were re-opened for review. This, however, did not prevent some unhappy leaders from contacting Sharad Pawar’s NCP in search of options.
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The delay in the publication of the Congress list is thought to be primarily due to the bitter turf war between leaders for tickets for their followers. Spokesman Jagdish Tytler, however, insisted “things were on schedule”, and the list would come out on Tuesday.
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The delay in the publication of the Congress list is thought to be primarily due to the bitter turf war between leaders for tickets for their followers. Spokesman Jagdish Tytler, however, insisted “things were on schedule”, and the list would come out on Tuesday.
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But even before that happens, sceptics have begun to fear the worst. “If we choose wrong candidates, we are going to hand over to the BJP the advantage that we now have over them,” said a senior leader.
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.
