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Smeeta Mishra Pandey
NEW DELHI, NOV 27: Sheila Dikshit's car wormed its way through heavy traffic from the Hardarpuri jhuggi clusters to her B-2, Nizamuddin East residence last evening. She had come home cold and tired, but happy. Before leaving the DPCC office, she had gone through the results of the exit poll which predicted a sweeping victory for the Congress here.
There were hundreds of party workers waiting to meet her at her residence. On any other evening, she would probably have met them. But last evening was different. Turning her back on all phone calls and visitors, she had a quiet dinner.
``After dinner, I did not waste a minute. I must have been fast asleep by 9.30 pm. It was as though I had to catch up on years of lost sleep. Till 6.30 am today, I did not budge from bed,'' Dikshit disclosed.
Her trusted cook, Ram Khelawan, was ``happy to see Madam in a good mood, early in the morning'' when he served her papayas for breakfast. The morning's newspaper headlines left her beaming. Dikshit now looked forward tomeeting her visitors. ``I am confident of becoming the Chief Minister this time. I met thousands of party workers this morning,'' she boasted to Indian Express in the afternoon,``All of them wanted to discuss the party's plans.''
Amidst the excitement, Dikshit said she had not forgotten to enquire about the condition of the 500 residents of the Hardarpuri jhuggi cluster in Gautam Nagar, who had taken ill after consuming free snacks.
``I am concerned about those innocent people who fell sick for no fault of their's. I will do whatever I can for them,''she said.
The Congress's Chief-Minister-in-waiting then spent the afternoon with Sonia Gandhi. She was about to leave for the All India Congress Committee (AICC) headquarters, when this reporter called. ``I am in a hurry. There is a meeting at the AICC headquarters at 3 pm.'' Before any more queries could be made to her, she hastened to add, ``No..no, we are not discussing our political strategies. I will do that after November 30.''
Dikshit hastickets for the late night-show of the Yash Johar mega-hit Kuchh Kuchh Hota Hai. ``I have seen the advertisements of the film on television and have been waiting for a long time to see it . I had no time left to myself during campaigning. Now that I have time on my hands, I will finally watch the film,'' she said, with a smile.
Victory, a frightening prospect
Congress Chief Ministerial candidate Sheila Dikshit fears that if her party does indeed form the Government next week, ``we will have a very hard time because both the Government at the Centre and at the municipality level are being run by the BJP''. Dikshit expressed the fear during an interview to Star News on Thursday. She also ruled out considering ministership for Congressmen suspected of being involved in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, unless the cases end.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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This story was printed from Net Express located at http://www.expressindia.com. Net Express provides a portal to India, with news from The Indian Express and The Financial Express along with sites on travel and tourism, the entertainment industry, the power sector, the environment and much more.
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