The Congress on Thursday lost the by-election to both the Okhla and Dwarka Assembly constituencies in Delhi as people rejected “family politics” and voted in favour of local and more approachable leaders.
While the Dwarka seat was bagged by Pardyuman Rajput of the BJP, Lalu Prasad’s Rashtriya Janata Dal also opened its account in the Delhi Assembly with Asif Mohammad Khan winning from Okhla.
Both the constituencies were earlier represented by Congress MLAs and with this defeat the strength of the Congress in the 70-member Delhi Assembly has now gone down to 41 from 43.
In Dwarka, which was earlier represented by Poorvanchal leader Mahabal Mishra and went to polls as he resigned on being elected to the Lok Sabha from West Delhi, BJP candidate Pardyuman Rajput won against his nearest Congress rival Tilotma Choudhary, by a margin of 11,365 votes.
While Mr. Rajput – who had lost the Assembly election to Mr. Mishra in November last – polled 35,891 votes, Ms. Choudhary, who was the lone woman candidate in the fray, polled 24,526 votes.
There was a direct fight in Dwarka and the only other candidate who managed to secure votes in four figures was Independent Madan Mohan, who got 3,178 votes. The deposits of all the other 10 candidates were forfeited.
Sources said the results in Dwarka clearly showed that the November 2008 win for the Congress had much to do with the overall support for the party that had ruled Delhi for 10 years. “That win was because people also wanted to install the Sheila Dikshit Government yet again. This time the outcome of the election had nothing to do with the formation or continuity of the Government and so it was the individual appeal of the candidates that mattered most,’’ said a Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee office-bearer.
“This is the third straight loss for the Congress in West Delhi after defeats in the Hastsal and Dichaon Kalan wards in the MCD by-elections last month. Hastsal was a 90 per cent Poorvanchali area but still we lost. And now Dwarka has been lost by a big margin and even the votes polled by all the other 11 candidates could not have prevented a BJP win here. This is because some party leaders like former MP Sajjan Kumar and MLA Mukesh Sharma were kept away from campaigning,’’ said another Congress leader.
In Okhla, which went to elections as former MLA Pervez Hashmi of the Congress had resigned on becoming Rajya Sabha MP, the contest was much more keen this time. Asif Mohammad Khan of the RJD polled the maximum of 23,394 votes and defeated his nearest rival Braham Singh of the Bahujan Samaj Party, who got 18,387 votes, by a margin of 5,007 votes. Here the Congress candidate Farhad Suri finished third by polling 17,804. His only consolation would be that he got 86 more votes than Ramvir Singh Bidhuri of the Nationalist Congress Party who got 17,718 votes and yet finished fourth. The BJP candidate Mohammad Irfan Ahmad was a distant fifth having secured only 2,519 votes.
Incidentally in the Okhla Assembly segment, the Congress had taken a lead of over 50,000 votes in the Lok Sabha elections earlier this year when Ms. Dikshit’s son Sandeep had contested from East Delhi. But in just three months, the party appears to have given up much of those gains.
Sources said another reason for these result was that Mr. Bidhuri, who had contested the Assembly elections last year from Badarpur as a Congress candidate, had helped Mr. Hashmi and Mr. Dikshit in his areas of Gujjar stronghold in the Assembly and Lok Sabha elections respectively. But this time, the votes got split as he had quit the Congress and contested on an NCP ticket.
