Congress’s Sheila Dikshit on who’s the bigger rival in Delhi - BJP or AAP

Sheila Dikshit is also the Congress’ candidate for the North East Delhi constituency and is banking on her 15-year stint as chief minister to wrest the seat from sitting BJP MP Manoj Tiwari.

Senior Congress leader and the party’s candidate from North East Delhi, Sheila Dikshit has no regrets that the party could not stitch an alliance with AAP for the Lok Sabha polls.

Sheila Dikshit(PTI FILE)

“Congress is too big a party and far too historical a party while AAP is too small and just confined to the national capital,” she told Hindustan Times. Dikshit had been a sharp and loud critic of the idea of the Congress teaming up with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in Delhi.

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Reacting to colleague and Congress candidate from the New Delhi seat Ajay Maken’s recent statement that had the Congress-AAP alliance materialised, the grand old party would have won all 7 Delhi seats and with margins of more than 2-3 lakhs each, she said it was his “personal perception.”

“But we contest elections not with perceptions. We contest them because we are contesting,” she added. The buzz over a possible tie-up between the Congress and AAP continued for weeks before nominations for the polls. But all speculations were put to rest when the two sides were unable to work out a seat-sharing formula for the alliance.

Sheila Dikshit is also the Congress’ candidate for the North East Delhi constituency and is banking on her 15-year stint as chief minister to wrest the seat from sitting BJP MP Manoj Tiwari. AAP’s Dilip Pandey is the other candidate in the fray in the three-cornered contest.

“I am going to compete with both of them,” says Dikshit, adding that she considers BJP to be the bigger competitor as the party holds all the 7 seats in Delhi as of now. “AAP only makes a lot of noise about itself,” she added.

Asked how many seats the Congress would win in Delhi, she refused to speculate saying, “People are beginning to evaluate the candidates in the fray. I would not like to comment on the outcome of the elections since there are about ten days left for the electoral process to be over,” said Dikshit as she signed off.