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Congress sweeps Delhi 7-0 on development plank
Published on Sun, May 17, 2009 at 01:03 in 
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New Delhi: The Congress made it a clean sweep in the national capital on Saturday winning all the seven Lok Sabha seats. And party leaders are attributing it to "good governance" and its development plank - the victory coming six months after the party scored a thumping win in last year's assembly elections.
According to Congress party, it was the development programmes of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government and work carried out by the Delhi government that attracted people towards the party.
Expressing happiness over the party's clean sweep in Delhi, Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit said, "I expected it (the results). My expectations have come true. I am grateful to the people of Delhi".
"The people of Delhi have begun to understand that governments are all about honest governments. There will be better coordination now. The slogan of aam aadmi (common man) was not a hollow slogan - we have done it in education, employment," Dikshit told reporters.
Congress' four sitting parliamentarians - Ajay Maken from New Delhi, Kapil Sibal from Chandni Chowk, Krishna Tirath from northwest Delhi and Sandeep Dikshit from east Delhi - retained their seats defeating their nearest BJP rivals.
Delhi Congress chief Agarwal defeated BJP's B L Sharma Prem from northeast Delhi while to everyone's surprise Congress MLA from Dwarka, Mahabal Mishra, defeated three time BJP MLA Jagdish Mukhi.
In south Delhi constituency Sajjan Kumar's brother Ramesh Kumar defeated BJP's Ramesh Bidhuri.
For Congress it was the "negative" ideology of the BJP that lead to its defeat while many Delhi BJP leaders blame infighting as the reason for party's defeat in the national capital. However, some other admit that development was the main factor behind the loss.
"The BJP was engaged in negative campaigning and they did not have any policy or plans to attract voters. The development work done by the party has brought fruits in this elections," said Agarwal.
"Congress policies are for the common man and people have voted for that. No doubt Sheilaji has done good work but the policies are formulated at the Centre. We want to make a government for the common man," said Tirath.
"We accept people's mandate and will work again for the party. I think BJP was defeated following internal fight among the party workers," said BJP candidate from south Delhi, Ramesh Bidhuri.
However, Delhi BJP denied the charge saying people voted the Congress for formation of a stable government at the Centre.
"Infighting is not the reason for loss. It is people's mandate as they wanted a stable government at the Centre. In 1999, we had swept elections winning all the seven seats under Atalji's leadership," said Delhi BJP spokesperson Mewa Ram Arya.
"We accept people's mandate and the party will keep working. Even Left has suffered such a huge setback. We should see the mandate of national capital in that context," Arya added.
"Everything starts from zero, we will start working from scratch. We accept people's verdict. Elections in Delhi BJP are due and its natural that there will be some changes in the organisation in Delhi," said Delhi BJP secretary Virendra Sachdeva.
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