Sheila Dikshit: Delhi's tallest leader who transformed the city

Sheila Dikshit's demise marks the end of an era in the national capital's political scenario. The grand old lady of Delhi's politics will be remembered as much for the remarkable transformation that the city witnessed under her three-term reign, as for her doughtiness as a politician who vanquished several challenges to her leadership to leave a huge imprint on the Congress in Delhi and outside.

It has been five years since she was defeated by Arvind Kejriwal and the Congress went out of power in Delhi.

However, the Congress, in acknowledgment of the great recall value of the development that the city saw during her tenure, brought the 81-year-old leader back from near-retirement to lead the party in the national capital in the run-up to the Lok Sabha polls. And, braving health issues, she agreed to the party's plea to be a contestant from Northeast Delhi constituency.

The Congress veteran, who holds the record as the longest-serving chief minister of Delhi, having served from 1998 to 2013, was identified with Delhi's transformation into a modern capital. However, ironically, she had to fight the charge of being an “outsider”, detractors from within her own party claiming that she did not belong to the politics of Delhi as she did not hail from Delhi. It was always pointed out that she belonged to Punjab and was a 'bahu of UP', having married Vinod Dikshit, the son of former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Uma Shankar Dikshit.

Sheila Dikshit was born into a Punjabi Khatri family in Kapurthala, Punjab. Her father was an army colonel. Along with her two sisters, she grew up in Delhi, where she attended school at the Convent of Jesus and Mary, and graduated from the prestigious Miranda House.

She showed tremendous political cunning as she dealt with the threats to her leadership from the likes of Jagdish Tytler, Sajjan Kumar, Ram Babu Sharma, Subhash Chopra as also her protege-turned-bete noire Ajay Maken. At the same time, she endeared herself to different sections of the society. From unauthorised colonies to posh localities, she was popular everywhere.

It was Indira Gandhi who encouraged Dikshit to join politics, impressed by the meticulous manner in which she assisted her father-in-law. Rajiv Gandhi gave Dikshit her first electoral break when she contested from Kannauj in the 1984 Lok Sabha elections. In 1998, she contested the general elections from East Delhi constituency, but was defeated by BJP's Lal Bihari Tiwari. However, there was no turning back for her as she stormed back to dominate the political scene in Delhi for the next decade and a half.

However, the fag end of her final term as chief minister was marred by allegations of corruption in the Commonwealth Games in Delhi. She could not fend off the challenge posed to her by Kejriwal, who defeated her, in what was described as a David vs Goliath fight in the assembly elections of 2013.

Dikshit appeared to be heading into political retirement as she was appointed governor of Kerala in March 2014. She resigned from the post after the BJP came to power at the Centre in May 2014. However, the Congress brought her back from the sidelines, nominating her as the party's chief ministerial face in the Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh in 2017.

As she receded into the shadows again following the electoral debacle in UP, the party yet again pulled her back into political limelight, naming her president of the state unit in Delhi in the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections. It was poetic justice for the veteran leader as she took over charge from Maken, a supporter-turned-challenger.

At the helm of affairs in Delhi after a gap of a few years, Dikshit displayed she could not be taken for granted, standing her ground on the issue of forming an alliance with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the capital for the Lok Sabha elections. She was certain that Kejriwal and his party could not be trusted, and the road for the Congress to make a comeback in Delhi could be opened only by fighting it alone.

The former chief minister stood vindicated as the AAP was relegated to the third spot in five out of the seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi and the Congress emerged as the main rival to the BJP. She had begun working on her plans for the Assembly elections due early next year. This even resulted in run-ins with the AICC in-charge P.C. Chacko as also her colleagues in the state unit who were not in agreement with her.

It was only apt that Dikshit, who rose to become Delhi's tallest leader, was even in her last days immersed in her efforts to try and revive the Congress in the national capital.