“Guru Gobind Singhji ka Sikh hoon, Congress ka sipahi hoon, darnewale dil se paida nahin hua hoon (I am Guru Gobind Singhji’s Sikh, a soldier of the Congress; I wasn’t born with a heart prone to fear),” Delhi Congress president Arvinder Singh Lovely declared at the first large public gathering organised by the party at Sikh-dominated West Delhi in over three decades on Sunday.
Pitching Lovely as “Dilli ka Sardar”, the party was quick to declare the event – over a week in the making and staged in the middle of bustling Tilak Nagar, populated mostly by Sikh and refugee Punjabi families – a success. The hundreds in the audience in these parts must have been heartening for the party, which admittedly “lost touch with them” since, and due to, the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.
In the run-up to Sunday, the Congress held a hundred corner meetings across the West Delhi Parliamentary constituency, and party sources claimed that many in the crowd were “walk-in” supporters and bystanders.
Stinging attacks on the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and BJP governments in Delhi and at the Centre respectively, the nostalgia of the three successive Sheila Dikshit-led regimes that brought “development to the Capital”, and a reminder of the Congress’s relationship with the Sikhs before the aftermath of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination formed the core of the Congress ‘Pratigya Rally’.
At the meeting held metres from local AAP MLA Jarnail Singh’s office, Lovely said: “The people of Delhi have taken a pratigya (pledge) to defeat the BJP in all the seven parliamentary seats in the Capital in the 2024 elections… Delhiites now fondly recall the 15-year development-oriented governance by the Congress government of Sheila Dikshitji.”
“People want development, not politics of hatred… not the BJP’s agenda of pitting people against each other… For 15 years, the BJP was in power in the MCD and now the AAP has assumed power… Soaring corruption in the MCD has robbed Delhiites,” Lovely, who was considered close to the late Dikshit, said.
He quoted from both the Guru Granth Sahib and a couplet attributed to Lord Ram to attack the BJP’s agenda of “promoting religious divide”. “The Guru Granth Sahibji says ‘Awwal Allah noor upaya, kudrat ke sab bande (First, Allah created the Light; then He made all mortal beings)’… Today is Ashtami, the day after, we will all celebrate Dussehra together… Lord Ram’s chaupai says ‘Nirmal man jan so mohi pawa, mohi kapat chhal chhidra na bhawa (Only those whose heart is pure can attain God)’,” Lovely said, adding that Lord Ram “himself will mete out to them (the BJP) what they deserve in the coming elections”.
A Congress source said that earlier efforts by the party in the area had met with a lukewarm response, with people turning away despite vehicles being mobilised to get them. “Today, not a single bus or vehicle was deployed by us, but supporters came from as far as Matiala and Najafgarh.”
The Congress is also seeing the West Delhi rally as proof that its two-pronged strategy to resurrect itself in the Capital – of attacking the AAP with the 2025 Assembly elections in mind; and awakening its “dormant support base of traditional Congress families” – was a success.
A senior party leader said that for the corner meetings held before the Sunday rally, former MLA Mukesh Sharma established contact with many such families. “All of them came out today,” the leader said, pointing out that Tilak Nagar had “become a BJP stronghold following the 1984 anti-Sikh riots”.
On the fact that the AAP was a Congress partner in the INDIA coalition, a senior leader said they were only following their “duty” as a political party. “The two parties are in a larger, national alliance against the BJP. But has it stopped the AAP from contesting against us in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh?” a leader said, adding: “Till an alliance is formally announced for the seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi, the two parties are free to pursue their respective political paths.”
In his speech, Sharma, who referred to Lovely as “Dilli ka Sardar”, spoke about the Congress’s association with the Sikh and Punjabi communities and former Delhi Congress president Subhash Chopra’s refugee roots. “Who made the Guru Tegh Bahadur Memorial at Delhi’s border? The Congress, Sheila and Arvinder (Lovely) did. Who gave Punjabi the status of a second language in Delhi? We did.”
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Chopra told the audience: “It was the Congress that helped provide a roof over the heads to the first of the families who settled here after being uprooted (from Pakistan).”
As reported by The Indian Express earlier, the Congress is planning to crisscross the four corners of the Capital in weekly shows of strength before the Lok Sabha polls. The first such meeting was in Bawana last week, and the next will be in Northeast Delhi’s Mustafabad, one of the worst-affected in the 2020 Delhi riots, next Sunday.
The Congress has been decimated in the past few elections in the Capital, losing its political base to the AAP.