assembly-elections

Updated: Feb 12, 2020 13:54 IST

Delhi Congress in-charge PC Chacko resigned from his post, a day after the party’s drubbing in Assembly elections. The chief of the Delhi unit of the party, Subhash Chopra, had resigned on Tuesday, hours after the Congress could not win a single seat in Delhi.

The resignation was on expected lines for two reasons. One, Chacko had asked the party to relieve him of the responsibility last August but was told to oversee Delhi’s affairs in view of the assembly elections. Second, the Congress had declared at a press briefing soon after the results came in, that the effort to start rebuilding the party would start soon.

“We will rebuild the party from the scratch, from the drawing board, not impounded upon our ideology and our work, as I have already pointed out and whatever would need to be done and sacrifices that would need to be made, no Congressman or woman will shy away from it,” Congress’ chief spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala had said on Tuesday.

Chacko was appointed Delhi in-charge in November 2014 ahead of the 2015 assembly elections. He had replaced general secretary Shakeel Ahmed who had then sought a leave of three months to visit his family in Canada.

Chacko shared an uneasy relationship with three-time Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit who took over as state Congress president in January 2019 after Ajay Maken resigned on health grounds. The two were at loggerheads over the issue of having an alliance with AAP for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. While Chacko favoured a tie-up with AAP, Dikshit vehemently opposed it.

The party had appointed Chopra in October last year, just few months ahead of the elections following Dikshit’s death on July 20. He resigned on Tuesday taking moral responsibility for the poll debacle.

The Congress ended up with a little less than five per cent vote share in this year’s Delhi elections. Sixty seven candidates of the Congress-led alliance lost their deposits in Delhi.

In the 2015 Delhi Assembly elections, the Congress did not win any seat but had managed to notch up a 9.7 per cent vote share. This time round it was completely decimated.

Surjewala said the party’s defeat in the national capital is disappointing but claimed that “we have, however, not lost the battle”.