UP to Delhi to UP: Sheila Dikshit’s Career Comes Full Circle

After much speculation, Sheila Dikshit has been named the Congress’ CM candidate for poll-bound Uttar Pradesh.

Three-time Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit is now the Congress’ face in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh. (Photo: Reuters)

Nearly three decades ago, Sheila Dikshit was hailed as Uttar Pradesh’s bahu, when she began her career from the state in 1984. After Thursday’s announcement by the Congress, Dikshit is going back to where she started from. But there is a lot that happened in the middle.

After much speculation and going back and forth with names, the Congress finally named the former Delhi Chief Minister, as the Chief Ministerial candidate for poll-bound Uttar Pradesh.

Dikshit, now 78, had earlier met the party President Sonia Gandhi and Vice President Rahul Gandhi, and had reportedly warmed up to the idea of a leading role in UP.

What This Announcement Means

The daughter-in-law of the prominent Congress leader from UP, Uma Shankar Dikshit, she had earlier deemed herself “UP’s daughter-in-law,” saying that she was prepared to play any role in the state.

Uma Shankar Dikshit was a Brahmin face in the state, and had served as a Union Minister for a long time.

Perhaps Dikshit also has been brought in by the Congress to win back their Brahmin vote-bank, which they have lost to the BJP and partly to Mayawati’s BSP after the Mandal-Mandir politics of the 1990s.

Interestingly, Dikshit is not a local UP leader. If the Congress were to go into a Bihar-like Mahagathbandhan alliance against the BJP, it would either be Akhilesh Yadav as the CM candidate if the Congress ties up with the Samajwadi Party, or Mayawati, if the alliance is with BSP.

The Congress would therefore have lesser to lose if a non-local leader like Sheila Dikshit was asked to back down from her candidature, than a leader with a strong local presence in the state.

Congress’ Chief Ministerial candidate in Uttar Pradesh, Sheila Dikshit. (Photo: Reuters)

Three-Times Delhi Chief Minister

The three-time Delhi Chief Minister, Dikshit had an uninterrupted rule in the capital for 15 years.

She has enjoyed the patronage of the Gandhi family, and for nine of those 15 years as Delhi CM, she had the support of a Congress-led UPA government at the Centre.

In Delhi, she had been credited with growing infrastructure like flyovers and building better public transport.

But through her tenure and beyond, Dikshit’s name has also been dragged through the mud as she was linked to the Commonwealth Games scam, derided for the failed Bus Rapid Transport corridor project and has now been accused in the Water Tanker scam by the Aam Aadmi Party.

2012 was a watershed year for Dikshit’s rule in the capital, with the heinous ‘Nirbhaya’ rape incident sparking strong protests in Delhi and across the country.

The Aam Aadmi Party, then in its infant stage, lent a voice to the common people of Delhi who were disillusioned by Dikshit’s rule.

In the elections that followed, Congress along with Dikshit was ousted from Delhi. She lost the New Delhi constituency to AAP’s Arvind Kejriwal.

Sheila Dikshit with Congress President Sonia Gandhi. (Photo: Reuters)

Sheila Dikshit’s Entry Into Politics

It is said that her entry into politics was a reluctant one, and she climbed the political ladder assisting her father-in-law, who was a minister in Indira Gandhi’s cabinet.

It was the Gandhi matriarch who first picked Dikshit to be a part of a United Nations delegation. In 1984, she joined Rajiv Gandhi’s government after bagging a Lok Sabha seat from UP after her husband, Vinod Dikshit’s death.

In 1998, Dikshit was able to dislodge the BJP government using the issue of the high price of onion and other staples in her election campaign. She stayed on Delhi for the next three terms.

But Dikshit’s defeat in Delhi and her ineffective tenure as Governor of Kerala later was widely regarded as the death knell in her political career, until UP happened.

It now remains to be seen how the politics of the state plays out.

(With inputs from The Indian Express, The Economic Times and The New Indian Express.)