Admired by friends and foes alike, former Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit was a rare politician
Warm, courteous and affable, Congress leader and former Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit was always seen as more of a friendly neighbourhood aunt and less of a politician. Despite her long years in the rough and tumble of India politics, her genteel aura remained intact till the very end.
Born into a Punjabi Khatri family in Kapurthala in 1938 and raised in the capital, Sheila was far removed from politics in her early years. After obtaining an arts degree from Miranda House, Sheila married into a political family after her betrothal to IAS officer Vinod Dikshit, the son of independence activist and Uttar Pradesh leader Uma Shankar Dikshit.
Sheila joined active politics by assisting her father-in-law after Vinod’s untimely death. It was here that she was noticed by the Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Sheila was handpicked by Rajiv Gandhi to be part of his council of ministers after he became the prime minister in 1984.
A Gandhi family loyalist, Sheila is credited with changing the face of Delhi during years as Chief Minister. That she retained the post for 15 years, winning three consecutive elections from 1998 to 2013 says much about her administrative skills and popularity.
Her efforts in transforming Delhi’s infrastructure by improving public transport in the city and introducing buses powered by compressed natural gas (CNG) to combat pollution won her many accolades.
It was during her tenure that Delhi transformed into a cosmopolitan capital, bringing in an infrastructure revolution in the city by building roads and fly-overs along with the Delhi Metro.
“For over 15 years, we saw Delhi flourishing every day. The amount of greenery and infrastructure that Delhi has today is because of Dikshitji,” said Jagdish Sharma, a Congress party worker.
Added Mubeen Firoz, another Delhiite: “Every day in the morning she used to have a public meeting at her home. I remember her listening to every citizen and working hard to make their lives easy.”
Some of the sheen wore off when a spate of corruption scandals against the Congress government at the Centre broke out and Sheila herself came under the scanner for Commonwealth Games fiasco in 2010 which was the beginning of her downfall.
As Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption movement gained ground, leading to the birth of a new entity — the Aam Admi Party (AAP), Sheila came under increasing pressure. Her government also bore the brunt of the 2012 Nirbhaya gang rape case with street demonstrations breaking out in the city.
In the 2013 Assembly elections, the Congress was reduced to just eight seats with Sheila herself losing the polls to AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal in the hung results.
AAP went on to form the government with support from the Congress despite the two parties fighting each other tooth and nail. The government fell soon and in the elections held in 2015, the Congress failed to open its account in the state Assembly for the first time ever.
Sheila Dikshit returned to oblivion as the city politics changed forever.
She made a comeback ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections as the chief of Delhi Congress. She contested from North East Delhi but lost to city Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) president Manoj Tiwari.
As president of the Delhi Congress unit, Sheila was in the middle of a daunting task of reviving the party from dust to prepare for the Assembly elections due next year but her health deteriorated and she had to leave the task incomplete.
United Progressive Alliance (UPA) chairperson and senior Congress leader Sonia Gandhi condoled her death, saying she worked with such vision to transform Delhi to make it a better place to live in for all its citizens.
In a letter to Dikshit’s children Sandeep and Latika Dikshit, Gandhi said: “I write to you with my heart filled with grief and a great sense of loss, for your beloved mother occupied a huge space in it.
“I came to share my husband’s regard for Sheilaji and to value her very special gifts as I developed my own close relationship with her.”
Recalling her memories with Dikshit, Gandhi said they had worked closely together during the years she was Chief Minister of Delhi, the state Congress chief and Secretary of the Indira Gandhi Memorial Trust.
“She worked with such vision and dedication to transform Delhi, to make it a much better place to live in for all its citizens, including the poorest, and that tremendous achievement remains her lasting legacy,” she said.
“She brought grace, humanity, wisdom and excellence to everything she did. And with what courage and loyalty she served the Congress Party, till the end,” she added.
An entire spectrum of the country’s political leadership paid homage to Sheila Dikshit, Delhi’s longest serving Chief Minister, who was remembered as a ‘mother figure’, ‘banyan tree’ and ‘iron lady’.
Jagdish Sharma, another Congress worker and Sheila Dikshit supporter, said that she was like a banyan tree which protected the Congress over the years.
Girish Agarwal, a friend of Sheila Dikshit’s son Sandeep Dikshit and owner of the Bengali Sweets franchise, remembered her as an iron lady.
“Only two words could define madam — iron lady. Only she could lay the infrastructure that Delhi has today. I have never seen a leader with such strong will power,” Agarwal said.
It has been six years since Sheila was voted out of power, but no one, be it her opponents or supporters, can deny her immense contribution to the transformation of the capital city. Sheila’s many achievements drew praise and earned the respect of political rivals.
If BJP veteran Vijay Kumar Malhotra described her as his sister, BJP MP Manoj Tiwari, who defeated her in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, said that she was a mother figure in his life, such was her rapport with rivals.
After her death on July 20 following a cardiac arrest, senior leaders from a spectrum of political parties paid tributes to Sheila, a politician who in her death united an otherwise divided polity in grief.
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