Ajay Maken fails to charm Delhi -Governance Now

Ajay Maken fails to charm Delhi

Maken takes moral responsibility and quits after the rout of the Congress in the Delhi civic polls

GN Bureau | April 26, 2017

#MCD elections 2017 #Delhi #Congress #Ajay Maken #Delhi polls

The dismal performance of the Congress in the Municipal Corporations of Delhi elections forced party chief Ajay Maken to announce his resignation, ending an energetic effort to revive the party in the national capital.

Ajay Maken, now 53, had taken over as the chief of Delhi Congress in 2015 after the party suffered a humiliating defeat in the assembly polls, failing to even bag one seat. Two years later, there has been no change in the situation, with the Congress coming in a poor third in the civic elections.

The Congress had taken a beating in the December 2013 assembly polls in which it had won in only eight seats.

Maken took the moral responsibility for the defeat and resigned from his post on Wednesday afternoon, even though the final results were yet to come in.

Before the civic elections, Governance Now had caught up with Maken who had expressed confidence of a Congress victory.

He had said that the main focus “will be on rectifying the system and making MCDs self-reliant. They cannot meet the expectations of people until and unless they can generate their own funds. It is very important for the MCDs to be out of debt and be self-sufficient. Secondly, massive corruption has taken place under the nose of BJP in last 10 years; we will order a probe into these cases if voted to power”.

Maken, who is a former union minister, had then said that their “competition is only with BJP, not AAP. We are not under any pressure; AAP has lost its ground in Delhi in the last two years. Their intention in Delhi was not to govern and have failed miserably. They have already lost the plot in civic polls”.

He had strongly criticised the Aam Aadmi Party and said that the “fact that they capitalised AAP's victory to spread their political wings across the country left Delhiites in a lurch. As a result, we have an absentee chief minister in Arvind Kejriwal who shows no interest in governing Delhi. His political ambitions are too high and have overshadowed his interest in governing the capital”.

With Maken putting in his papers, the Congress is now staring at a bleak future.

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