Of the 42 legislators, who sat in the Opposition in the fifth Delhi Legislative Assembly, only one, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s O.P. Sharma, the sitting MLA from Vishwas Nagar, has been voted back for another term in the Assembly.
Besides the 31 BJP legislators, the Opposition benches constituted of eight Congress MLAs, one from Shiromani Akali Dal, one from Janata Dal (United) and one Independent.
Among the legislators, Delhi Congress chief Arvinder Singh did not contest the 2015 Delhi Assembly polls and Independent candidate Rambeer Shokeen’s wife contested on a Congress ticket instead of him.
While the BJP repeated its sitting legislators in the 2015 polls, barring three who were elected for Lok Sabha, the Congress fielded eight sitting legislators, including former JD(U) MLA Shoaib Iqbal, who switched over to the Congress just ahead of the polls. Sole Akali legislator Manjinder Singh Sirsa was also in the fray from Rajouri Garden.
Across the board, sitting MLAs from the BJP, the Congress and the JD(U) did not get voted back. Mr. Sharma, a close aide of Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, was the only one who managed to retain his seat and won over the Aam Aadmi Party by a margin of over 10,000 votes.
Among the biggest losers was the BJP’s Janakpuri sitting MLA Jagdish Mukhi, who lost by 25,580 votes. The BJP veteran has represented the seat five times. Some of the other big names from the saffron party who bit the dust are Shahib Singh Chauhan, Subhash Sachdeva, Naresh Gaur, Mohan Singh Bisht, Rambir Singh Bidhuri, and Satorakash Rana.
Some of the Congress veterans who have been regulars in Delhi Assembly but lost this time with huge margins include Haroon Yusuf, Mateen Ahmed Mohd Asif, Prahlad Singh Sawhney and Jai Kishan.
