NEW DELHI: The delay in picking a leader to head the Delhi unit of the Congress party is making its state leadership jittery. Senior party functionaries say that with assembly elections just a couple of months away, the absence of a president and political activities on the ground may cause “more damage” to the party.
“It is already too late. The decision should have been taken by now. We will need to pull out all the stops and energise our cadre. We shouldn’t forget our opponents. We will be challenging a party (Aam Aadmi Party) that decimated us in the 2015 assembly elections, and the other is the BJP,” said a senior Congress leader in Delhi.
The post of Delhi Congress president has been vacant for two months since the demise of Sheila Dikshit.
A senior party functionary said that PC Chacko, the AICC member in charge of the Delhi unit, met interim Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Tuesday to discuss the matter, but no decision was taken. “Deliberation over names had been completed long ago, but the president needs to announce the name.
Chacko also held a meeting with Soniaji today. The name may be announced in three-four days after Pitru Paksha Shradh, which is ending on the weekend. We must understand that time is running out. Moreover, both parties (BJP and AAP) are already on the ground,” said the Congress leader.
A leader privy to the discussion between Chacko and Gandhi said, “Discussions revolved around who could be the right person to lead the Delhi unit at this crucial juncture. Soniaji is yet to take a decision. She wanted some more time,” he said.
Earlier this month, Gandhi held several rounds of meetings with Delhi Congress leaders and former presidents of the state unit—Tajdar Babar, Ajay Maken, Jai Prakash Agrawal, Arvinder Singh Lovely, and Subhash Chopra—to reach a consensus. She also met three working presidents of Delhi Congress —Haroon Yusuf, Devendra Yadav, and Rajesh Lilothia.
While the Congress is yet to decide its line of attack and choose a successor to Diskhit, the AAP and BJP are already in election mode. Union minister Prakash Javadekar, who was appointed assembly election incharge, has been regularly meeting Delhi BJP leaders.
The leaders of the saffron party and AAP are also holding public meetings and organising protests on a daily basis.
Barring their appearance in a few protests by individuals and some press conferences, most Congress leaders in Delhi have largely been unseen.
Congress leaders in Delhi admit that the delay in the appointment of the state unit chief had affected their “activities”, though they added that they had been meeting people in their constituencies.