JOIN USEven though Sharmistha Mukherjee’s maiden plunge into politics did not yield favourable results, the President’s daughter is in no mood to give up her political career.
Mukherjee, who contested the Delhi Assembly Elections from the Greater Kailash seat, managed to bag only 6,102 votes.
While AAP candidate Saurabh Bhardwaj bagged 57,589 votes and BJP’s Rakesh Kumar Gullaiya was the runner up, losing by a margin of 14,583 votes.
On Tuesday, Bhardwaj had said it was a wrong political move for Mukherjee to enter the political fray at this point.
However, Mukherjee dismissed the fact that she joined politics at the wrong time with Congress failing to secure any seat in the Delhi Assembly.
“Had I joined politics for personal gain then I would have considered exiting politics. But I will not exit politics. I will stay here and work for the party now,” Mukherjee told Deccan Herald on Wednesday.
“Politics is not really about winning the elections once. I want to work for the party because I still believe Congress is the only alternative at the national level.”
Congress had fielded Mukherjee from the Greater Kailash seat in order to reclaim a considerable voteshare of the Bengali population in CR Park in the constituency.
However, Mukherjee’s candidature failed to strike with the voters here with most residents identifying her as a “parachute candidate”.
In an earlier interview with this newspaper, Mukherjee herself had identified Shahpur Jat and Chirag Dilli as the areas where people would support her. CR Park, Sheikh Sarai, Khirki Extension were the weak areas for the party.
Mukherjee’s family members had also campaigned for her in CR Park and in the area’s nodal markets which had improved the situation to an extent.
Asked what went wrong for the Congress in this election, Mukherjee said it would need time to introspect. “I have just started and am a novice. This is not a question which I can answer so quickly. There are senior party leaders who are already trying to identifying the areas.”
For now, the most important bit is “cheering up the party workers”, she said. Meanwhile, she will connect more with workers at the grassroot level, she added.
Mukherjee will re-focus on her dancing career which had suffered a setback during electioneering. “I will carry on with both simultaneously,” she said.