Delhi Assembly elections turned out to be a contest between the ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the BJP. Congress was out of the game.
The AAP won 62 seats out of the total 70 Assembly seats it contested, five less from the last elections.
The BJP put up a fight in the run up to the poll after a comparatively slow start to the campaigning in January. It has won six seats (and is leading two others), up from the three it won in the 2015 polls - Rohini, Vishwas Nagar and Mustafabad.
Key constituencies
For Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, the home turf of New Delhi was a rather comfortable win with 46,758 votes (61.1% vote share) compared to the BJP’s Sunil Kumar Yadav, who managed 25,061 votes (32.75%). Kejriwal had won by a margin of 31,583 votes in the 2015 elections.
Patparganj was a close fight between Manish Sisodia --who is hailed as a high-scorer and had clutched a significant vote share in the previous two elections -- and Negi. The latter, along with Laxman Rawat of the Congress, are migrants from Uttarakhand and the community holds about 20% vote share in the constituency. Sisodia received 70,163 votes as against Negi’s 66,956 votes. Rawat, meanwhile, just got 2,802 votes.
Among the three seats that the BJP won the last time, the saffron party continued to be strong in two. In Rohini, BJP MLA Vijender Kumar managed to retain his constituency, securing 62,174 votes against AAP’s Rajesh Nama Bansiwala, who got 49,526 votes. In Vishwas Nagar as well, Om Prakash Sharma (65,830 votes) comfortably won the seat against Deepak Singla (49,373 votes) of AAP. It had to, however, give up the Mustafabad constituency where AAP candidate Haji Yunus (98,850 votes) comfortably defeated Jagadish Pradhan (78,146 votes).
Shakur Basti witnessed a close contest, with State Home Minister and AAP candidate Satyendar Jain initially trailing behind S.C. Vats of the BJP. Jain finally won, securing 51,165 votes against Vats’ 43,573 votes.
Development Minister and State AAP convener Gopal Rai (84,776) won his home turf of Babarpur against BJP’s Naresh Gaur (51,714 votes). The margin of over 33,000 votes was close to that in 2015.
In Okhla, which has been the seat of the Shaheen Bagh protests against the controversial Citizenship (Amendment) Act, sitting AAP MLA Amanatullah Khan secured 1,30,367 votes against BJP’s Braham Singh, who received 58,540 votes.
Similarly, sitting AAP MLA from Greater Kailash Saurabh Bharadwaj (60,372) retained his seat against Shikha Roy of the BJP (43,563 votes). Atishi, AAP’s candidate from Kalkaji who lost the Lok Sabha election last year from East Delhi, also defeated BJP’s Dharambir Singh after initially trailing. She received 55,897 votes as against Singh's 44,504 votes.
In Karawal Nagar, Mohan Singh Bisht of the BJP (96,721 votes) won against AAP’s Durgesh Pathak, who managed 88,498 votes.
Meanwhile, Burari gave a clear win to AAP’s Sanjeev Jha, who had received 1,39,598 votes. The Janata Dal (United) candidate trailing him, Shailendra Kumar, managed 51,440 votes.
Close fight
BJP candidates put up a strong challenge to AAP candidates in several constituencies. In Adarsh Nagar, Pawan Sharma of AAP faced a strong challenge from BJP’s Raj Kumar Bhatia. Sharma won with 46,892 votes even as Bhatia garnered 45,303 votes, a gap of merely 1,589 votes. In Bijwasan and Laxmi Nagar, the gap was further down to just 3 digits - 753 votes and 880 votes, respectively.
Similarly in Rithala, the contest was initially close between AAP’s Mohinder Goyal and BJP’s Manish Chaudhary. Goyal finally won with a safe margin, though, securing 87,940 votes against Chaudhary’s 74,067 votes.
Kirari also witnessed a tight electoral battle, with AAP’s Rituraj Govind (86,312 votes) winning against Anil Jha of the BJP (80,658 votes). In Krishna Nagar, S.K. Bagga of AAP won 72,111 votes as compared to 68,116 votes secured by BJP’s Anil Goyal.
Shalimar Bagh saw AAP’s Bandana Kumari lead with 57,707 votes against BJP’s Rekha Gupta, who received 54,267 votes. In Gandhi Nagar, BJP candidate Anil Kumar Bajpai won against Navin Chaudhary by about 6,000 votes.
