New Delhi Assembly: Were Arvind Kejriwal, Sandeep Dikshit ‘close friends’? Here's what Delhi Cong leader said

Voting for the 70-member Delhi Assembly will take place in a single phase on February 5

The New Delhi Assembly constituency is set for an intense battle as former chief minister and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chief Arvind Kejriwal takes on Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s Parvesh Verma and Congress’ Sandeep Dikshit. Interestingly, few are aware that Dikshit, a two-term MP from East Delhi, and Kejriwal, the long-standing MLA for New Delhi, have a history of working together.

Dikshit, in a recent interaction, shared his experience of meeting Kejriwal for the first time. “In 2004, after I won my election, I returned from working in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh with voluntary organisations where we operated in modest settings. One day, Aruna Roy called me and mentioned that an associate in Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal -- who had done significant work with RTI and was a Magsaysay award winner -- wanted to meet me,” he told news agency ANI.

“Kejriwal came one day to see me. He introduced himself and expressed a desire to observe how politics functions, including the daily engagements, the challenges faced by an MP, and the issues brought forward by the people,” Dikshit revealed.

“At that time, I was working out of a small garage converted into a public room with my office inside. He spent four to five days there and thereafter shared his feedback, which I found was not too balanced. He suggested that meetings shouldn’t take place inside a room but in the open, without a chair or table,” the Congress candidate added further.

Dikshit, the son of former Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit, filed his nomination from the New Delhi constituency on Thursday.

In the interview, he further revealed that he got the chance to work with Kejriwal in 2009 again after Nikhil Dey, another associate of Aruna Roy, reached out to him to support his election campaign. “Dey told me that Arvind Kejriwal would also assist in the project. I agreed to assign them one ward. Then, he came back with an expense estimate of Rs 40 lakh for that ward, which typically would have cost less than Rs 1 lakh. While I don’t believe he was financially dishonest, I think he was intellectually not in grasp. I think he understand numbers only when it suits him,” Dikshit added.

Voting for the 70-member Delhi Assembly will take place in a single phase on February 5 and the votes would be counted three days later.