Its second straight electoral wipeout in Delhi has bared several faultines in the Congress. After the results were declared, Sharmistha Mukherjee, daughter of former party grandee Pranab Mukherjee, slammed P Chidambaram for lauding the Aam Aadmi Party for its victory. Has the Congress outsourced the task of defeating the BJP to state parties, she asked the former finance minister. “If not why are we gloating over AAP’s victory rather than being concerned about our drubbing?”

AAP retained power in the capital winning 62 of the 70 Assembly seats, with the rest going to the BJP. The Congress, as in 2015, drew a blank.

PC Chacko, who supervised the Delhi Congress for the party’s national leadership going into the election, blamed the defeat on Sheila Dikshit’s government, which held power for 15 years until 2015. He claimed it was the Dikshit government which, through its policies, had lost the grand old party’s vote base to AAP. Ironically, though, the Congress had banked its entire campaign on Dikshit’s work.

Chacko was countered by Dikshit’s daughter, Latika, who pointed out the irony of the party flaunting her mother’s work to woo voters only to blame her after the results.

Veena Nair caught up with Dikshit’s son, former Congress MP Sandeep Dikshit, to talk about the results, the party’s performance, and Chacko’s comment. He shares his views on why the Congress failed yet again in Delhi, and what it needs to do to improve its fortunes.

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