The massive victory of Bharatiya Janata Party in Delhi may change the politics in the national capital as the ruling Aam Aadmi Party, which had come to power with a thumping majority in 2015 state elections, failed to take lead in any of the 70 assembly segments in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
While the BJP is a clear winner in 65 out of 70 assembly segments, it is the Congress that came first on five seats, all having large Muslim population. The AAP candidates have ended runners-up most in South and North West Delhi assembly segments while the Congress recovered its lost vote base to end as No. 2 in the rest of the city.
If AAP's meteoric rise in 2015 was spectacular, its fall four years later in 2019 Lok Sabha elections is equally astonishing. With assembly elections due next year, the news is not good for Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.
The best score for AAP was in Tughlakabad Assembly segment where it got 35.7 per cent of the votes when BJP's Ramesh Bidhuri got 52.1 and Congress was restricted to 7.8 per cent.
The second best was Deoli where it got 32.5 per cent vote share against 49.5 for the BJP and 14.5 for Congress.
The BJP, which had won three out of 70 seats in the assembly elections, can win more than 60 seats if the trend witnessed in 2019 holds. The Congress, which had failed to opened an account in 2015, can win five.
The Congress was ahead of BJP and AAP in Ballimaran in the walled city getting 53 per cent votes while the BJP got 36.4 and AAP 9. The Congress, which had ruled the city for 15 years before it was uprooted by AAP, delivered its best performance in Matia Mahal, another Muslim dominated pocket, bagging 65.1 per cent of the vote. The BJP polled 25 per cent and 8.3 per cent went to AAP. The other seat where Congress got maximum votes include Seelampur (56.6 per cent) and Okhla (37.2 per cent).
More From This Section
--IANS
gd/prs