Friday, April 22 2005 17:45 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: With dissidence rearing its head against her of late, Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit today (Apr 22, 2005) said that she was "deeply hurt" by it and declared she would not like to be an "unwelcome guest" in office.

"Eventually what will happen in a week's time or four days' time or three days' time, I cannot assume or presume. I will go by what happens because I don't think that I would like to be an unwelcome guest," she said in an interview.

She was responding to a question whether she would like to continue even if there was "no strong enough" intervention by the Central leadership in the matter.

Asked if she was upset at not getting any response to her request to meet Congress president Sonia Gandhi, Dikshit said, "I am not upset with things like that." But she maintained that the Chief Minister's post should be "protected and respected."

She said that she was "deeply hurt" at the attack launched on her Government by party MLAs at the Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee's (DPCC) executive committee meeting earlier this week. "I feel deeply hurt. There's no denying that. I sometimes feel that are people (partymen) being fair to me?"

Dikshit, however, defended her action of walking out of the meeting, saying, "There is a viewpoint that I should not have walked out. But I feel that I should (have). I did the right thing because I was just too deeply hurt and also shocked because I did not expect this. The agenda of the meeting was something different."

Recounting the party's successes in the capital under her, Dikshit said, "I also feel on the other hand that we have managed to create in Delhi a Congress-oriented Government, a Congress municipality. We won the Lok Sabha polls. That should speak for itself."

Referring to the opposition against her, Dikshit said, "They have a point of view. They have their own aspirations. They have their own problems, which I may or may not have been able to attend to."

She said that she has written to Congress president Sonia Gandhi on the issue and was waiting to hear from her.

Asserting she was not upset at not having got a response from Gandhi so far, she said, "I do feel that the position, whoever it may be, of a Chief Minister, has to be protected, it has to be respected, because it is an institution. It's not just X or Y or Dikshit. This institution is sacrosanct and that needs to be respected."

The Chief Minister also said that she has written to the party chief about some Central leaders backing the dissent against her. "And it's something which I think everybody saw," she said.

On the dissent spilling into the public domain, Dikshit said, "Yes, that's unfortunate. I can only tell you that it is an internal matter and in a party, which has won with a thumping majority, it's a large family. So, these kinds of things keep happening. We will deal with them as they come."

On whether she would battle it out in the face of the Opposition against her, she said, "No, I don't think I am that kind of a person. I would not like any fights."