New Delhi, Feb 02: Congress leadership's focus is likely to shift to party affairs in Delhi after the elections in four states scheduled later this month as chief minister Shiela Dikshit and her detractors have initiated moves and countermoves to gain supremacy.

With assembly elections in Delhi scheduled this year-end, detractors of the chief minister have renewed their campaign against her and are pressurising the party high command for a change in the leadership. The change of guard in Maharashtra has in a way emboldened the detractors who are wary of the style of functioning of the chief minister and a memorandum is understood to have been given to the central leadership by over 30 of the 52 party legislators seeking her replacement.

Party sources said that the chief minister appeared to be heading for a trouble as her reported moves seeking the ouster of PCC president Subhash Chopra and installation of her loyalist Ajay Maken, Delhi's tourism minister, in his place have backfired. Dikshit, who has succeeded in remaining the chief minister for the last four years shaking off occasional challenges from her detractors, this time appeared to have miscalculated the PCC president issue as it has helped the coming together of all her opponents in the party.

Bureau Report