New Delhi: It has long since been clear that the Aam Aadmi Party has registered a victory in the Delhi assembly elections, but now that the Election Commission’s counting is over, the figures have it officially. According to the Election Commission, AAP has won in 62 seats and the Bharatiya Janata Party, in eight seats. AAP’s vote share is currently at 53.7%, and the BJP’s at 38.5%.
The Congress, according to the EC, is not leading in a single seat. Its vote share is a mere 4.2%
Amid tight security, counting votes cast for the 70 assembly seats in Delhi began at 21 counting centres at 8 am. A separate hall has been designated for each assembly constituency at these centres.
Fate of 672 candidates sealed in EVMs
Of the 1.47 crore voters who were eligible to vote, around 62.59% turned out at the 13,780 polling booths that were set up across the city. This was around five percentage points lower than the 67.12% voting witnessed in 2015 assembly polls but around two percentage points more than what was seen in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
Also, while the voting was lacklustre to begin with and and only around 21% had voted in the first half of the day, it had picked up during the second has.
The election was contested by 672 candidates. While the Aam Aadmi Party fielded candidates from all 70 constituencies, the Bharatiya Janata Party contested 67 seats on its own and left two for its ally Janata Dal (United) and one for the Lok Janshakti Party. The Congress fought 66 seats on its own and left four for its ally, the Rashtriya Janata Dal.
AAP focused on development
The ruling AAP, which won 67 seats in the 2015 polls, is looking to form the government for the third consecutive time in Delhi and all the exit polls have also projected a clear majority for it this time. The party fought the polls on the issue of development and its performance over the last five years.
It claimed that it had fulfilled all the 70 promises it made in the last manifesto and that people benefited largely because of work done in the field of education reforms, setting up mohalla clinics and providing free water and power and travel to women.
BJP centred campaign around Shaheen Bagh
The BJP, while attacking AAP for non-performance, centred its campaign around the ongoing anti-Citizenship (Amendment) Act protest at Shaheen Bagh and the road blockade due to it. Its leaders, including Prime Minister Amit Shah and home minister Amit Shah, too spoke on these lines and urged voters to vote for the BJP if they did not want such blockades to affect them elsewhere.
Other party leaders like Uttar Pradesh chief minister Adityanath repeatedly spoke of Shaheen Bagh, Pakistan and biryani in the same breath; Union minister Anurag Thakur extolled party supporters to “Shoot the traitors”; and West Delhi MP Parvesh Verma was barred from campaigning twice by the Election Commission for his communal remarks.
But unlike the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, when the BJP won all seven seats in Delhi and polled over 58% of the votes, the similar divisive agenda does not appear to have worked for the party, at least if the exit polls are anything to go by.
Though the saffron party is supposed to have improved its vote share by 10 percentage points to around 35% over the last month, all the exit polls showed BJP getting somewhere between 2-26 seats.
Reluctance of Congress candidates, senior leaders may cost it dear
The Congress ruled Delhi for 15 years under Sheila Dikshit before the rise of the Kejriwal-led AAP. Now, though, the party appears to have lost its hold over its traditional voters in 2015, when it failed to win even a single seat.
This time, it took a nudge from interim president Sonia Gandhi for many of the senior leaders to contest the polls. Though the party leaders, aware of how the city is governed, raised pertinent questions around the claims of the AAP government, its senior leaders, including former president Rahul Gandhi, general secretary Priyanka Gandhi and former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh only campaigned for a couple of days.
The exit polls have projected that the party will find it hard to open its account, and if it does, will not move beyond a single digit.
Key seats to look out for
There are some key seats to look out for in these elections. Some of these are where prominent leaders of AAP, BJP and Congress are contesting while others are where candidates from their allies or prominent former legislators and ministers are trying their hand.
The Delhi chief minister is seeking his third straight election from New Delhi. This seat has historically always elected a chief ministerial candidate – in 2008 it was Sheila Dikshit and in 2013 and 2015 it was won by Kejriwal. This time he is facing a lawyer and former youth leader of the BJP, Sunil Yadav. The Congress has also fielded a little-known face in Romesh Sabharwal.
Like Kejriwal, deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia is also up against newcomers from Patparganj. His main rivals are again two little-known names, Ravi Negi of BJP and Laxman Rawat of Congress.
On the other hand young promising faces from AAP – Atishi, Raghav Chadha, Dilip Pandey and Saurabh Bhardwaj – are facing interesting contests.
The architect of Delhi’s education reforms, Oxford University-educated Atishi is up against Delhi Congress president Subhash Chopra’s daughter Shivani Chopra from Kalkaji. The BJP has fielded Dharamveer Singh.
Chadha is taking on BJP spokesperson R.P. Singh and former Delhi University Student’s Union president Rocky Tuseed from Rajinder Nagar.
AAP national spokesperson Pandey is fighting opposite former MLA Surender Singh Bittoo of BJP and Amar Lata Sangwan of Congress.
Bhardwaj, who in 2013 defeated Vijay Kumar Malhotra’s son Ajay, and became a minister in the first Kejriwal cabinet, won his 2015 election by defeating former President Pranab Mukherjee’s daughter, Sharmishtha. Later, he also demonstrated in Delhi assembly how EVMs could ‘hacked’, a claim denied by EC.
This time he is taking on Shikha Rai of BJP and Sukhbir Singh Pawar of Congress.
Delhi assembly speaker Ram Niwas Goyal is taking on former Congress minister Narendra Nath from Shahdara. The BJP candidate here is a local leader, Sanjay Goyal.
All eyes on Muslim-dominated seats
There are five seats in Delhi with over 40% Muslim population. In the 2015 elections, all of these, barring Mustafabad (from where BJP’s Jagdish Pradhan won) had elected AAP candidates. All eyes will be on these seats to see if the Congress has again made inroads in these or if AAP has chipped away at this traditional vote base of the grand old party for good.
One of these seats is Ballimaran, from where former Congress minister Haroon Yusuf is facing AAP MLA and minister Imran Hussain. BJP has given the ticket to its former MLA Moti Lal Sodi’s daughter-in-law Lata Sodhi.
In Okhla too, Congress has brought in former Delhi minister and former Rajya Sabha MP Parvez Hashmi to contest the polls. He is pitted opposite Amanatullah Khan of AAP, who organised the Shaheen Bagh anti-CAA protest. The BJP has gone with Brahm Singh.
A battle for survival for some leaders
For many former ministers and senior leaders, this election is also one of political survival.
In Gandhi Nagar, former Congress minister Arvinder Singh Lovely, who came second in the East Delhi Lok Sabha polls, is taking on Naveen Choudhary of AAP. The sitting AAP legislator, Anil Bajpai, is this time contesting on a BJP ticket.
Likewise, BJP leader in the Delhi assembly and Rohini MLA, Vijender Gupta, who was just one of the three party MLAs to win in 2015, is this time facing a serious challenge from Rajesh Nama Bansiwala of AAP and Sumesh Gupta of Congress.
In Vishwas Nagar, the third seat that was won by BJP, Om Prakash Sharma is seeking re-election opposite Deepak Singla of AAP and Gurcharan Singh of Congress.
All exit polls projected over 50% votes and complete majority for AAP
The Republic TV exit polls gave AAP a 51-52% vote share and the BJP a 38-40% vote share with a 4-5% vote share to the Congress and 5% to other parties.
It projected that the Arvind Kejriwal-led party would win 48-61 seats, while BJP would remain a distant second with 9-21 seats. The Congress, as per this poll, would again draw a blank as it did in 2015.
The Times Now-IPSOS exit poll survey also gave a complete majority to AAP, projecting it to win 44 seats. It said BJP would win the remaining 26 seats with Congress (despite a 6% vote share) and other parties not even getting close to victory on any. It gave AAP 51% vote share and BJP 40.5%.
The TV9-Cicero survey gave 54 seats to AAP, 15 to BJP and one to the Congress.
The ABP-C-Voter exit poll also projected a complete majority for AAP. It said the ruling party would get 50.4% of the votes and 49-63 seats; BJP would get around 36% votes and 5-19 seats while Congress will get 9% votes and 0-4 seats.
The India Today Axis poll, which was the most accurate during the Haryana elections, also showed AAP headed for a majority. It gave AAP 59-68 seats with the remaining 2-11 to the BJP. As per this poll, Congress or other parties would not win any seats.
This exit poll gave AAP 56% vote share, BJP 35% and Congress 5% of the votes.
Parties reacted differently to exit polls
Following the exit polls, while AAP welcomed the projections and said its work would speak for itself, the Congress said the exit polls were out of place. Its Delhi unit chief Subhash Chopra said the exit polls would fail and his party would perform much better. The party spokesperson Mukesh Sharma said the actual results would “startle everyone”.
Meanwhile, the BJP insisted that it was on course to forming the next government and would win at least 48 per cent seats. Its leaders said these polls only showed details of up to 3 pm, indicating that their supporters turned out in greater numbers in the evening.
Controversy over delay in announcement of poll percentage, EVMs
Following the polling, another controversy arose around the handling of EVM machines as some AAP leaders tweeted images of an election officer walking off with some machines after the voting got over and these had been deposited in the Centres. The party also deployed a large number of leaders and activists outside the counting centres to ensure that the EVMs were not carried out of there.
The EC later clarified that the sector officer shown in the video was carrying unused reserved machines and was shown walking with them since he had two polling stations to cover on foot since they were separated by narrow lanes.
As for the polling percentage, the EC clarified that the ‘delay’ cited in the release of final figures was because the voting went on till around 8 pm. In many centres, the officers had to then deposit the machines in the storage centres, they undertook scrutiny work the following day and thereafter all the data had to be tallied.
