Maken's 'style' has not helped; Congress was demoralised: Sheila Dikshit

New Delhi: Senior Congress leader Sheila Dikshit on Thursday said she 'pitied' Ajay Maken, who was the party's chief ministerial candidate for the recently held Delhi assembly polls, adding that his 'style' had not helped the grand old party.

"The signals that went from the Congress party did not inspire confidence. Although we didn't realise that we won't get even a single seat, it was clear from the beginning that we would lose badly. What can I say about Ajay Maken, except that I pity him," Dikshit told ANI. "He got the leadership and he took it... but quite obviously his style did not help the Congress,".

Spelling out the party's weaknesses, the former Delhi chief minister stated that the campaign by the Congress should have been aggressive.

"Ajay Maken was the chairman of the campaign committee; the campaign should have been aggressive. There was lack in our strategy, maybe in totality the Congress party was demoralised," Dikshit said.

"It is now Arvind Kejriwal's duty to fulfil all the 70 promises that he made," she added.

In an unprecedented first for the national capital, the Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party received 67 seats out of the 70 on offer in the Delhi polls. With this extraordinary mandate, the AAP has become the first non-Congress and non-BJP party to rule the city.

The Congress, which in power in Delhi for 15 years up to 2013 and had been trying to rebuild its lost ground in the city, failed to even open its account in the polls.

The BJP, which was relying heavily on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's popularity and had brought in former IPS officer Kiran Bedi as its chief ministerial candidate to counter Kejriwal, also managed to secure just three seats. 

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'Immigrants' from Northeast: BJP's vision document sparks massive outrage

New Delhi: BJP's vision document for the Delhi assembly polls on Tuesday stirred up a controversy by referring people from north eastern states in the national capital as "immigrants", after which Congress demanded an apology and removal of the words.

The 24-page document that entails the party's roadmap in taking Delhi forward by making it a world-class city and steps in public welfare includes a section on "North Eastern Immigrants to be Protected". The section talks of special cells in all police stations and 24-hour helpline numbers to be set up "for protection of north-eastern migrants".

"Special cells in all police stations and special 24-hour helpline numbers to be set up for the protection of the NorthEastern migrants. To safeguard the students of NE origin, special guardianship will be arranged with local families for them," the document says. Congress was quick to react, with its leader Ajay Maken questioning "is BJP trying to say the people from the North East are not Indian citizens?."

"BJP's vision document has a pointer called 'north-eastern immigrants to be protected'. The word immigrant is used when people move from one country to another, so does BJP consider people from the North-Eastern states as residents of some other country or the north-eastern states according to them are not part of India? "We demand that they remove that line from the manifesto and apologise to public," Maken said.

He said the document with such reference to people from north east comes at a time when External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj is on a visit to China. "If the ruling party is saying such things in its manifesto then on what basis Swaraj is talking to China about how its force enters the state of Arunachal Pradesh and other areas, we need to understand that," he said.

The national capital has witnessed a spate of racial attacks and discrimination against people from north east in the recent past and a NE student Nido Taniam, son of of an Arunachal MLA, died after being badly beaten by shopkeepers at a Lajpat Nagar market here. The Centre had formed a special committee headed by North Eastern Council member M P Bezbaruah to recommend steps to address the concerns of people from NE region living across the country. 

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