In a splendid electoral performance, the Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has won 62 seats while the BJP has won eight seats in the 70-member Delhi Assembly. AAP’s landslide win in the Delhi assembly election, for the third time, has left BJP stunned.
“This is the victory of every family in Delhi who treated me like their son. This is the victory of every family of Delhi that has started getting 24-hour electricity supply, whose children have started receiving quality education, and whose members have started getting good health services in hospitals of Delhi,” Kejriwal said after winning the election.
“Kaam ki rajneeti bhari padi (The politics of work overshadowed everything). We will decide the swearing in date and inform everyone soon,” he added.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi also congratulated Kejriwal. “Wishing them the very best in fulfilling the aspirations of the people of Delhi,” he tweeted.
All prominent AAP leaders have been able to retain their seats. AAP’s prominent faces Arvind Kejriwal, Manish Sisodia, Satyendra Jain, Gopal Rai, Imran Hussain, Kailash Gahlot, and Rajendra Pal Gautam, retained the New Delhi, Patparganj, Shakur Basti, Babarpur, Ballimaran, Najafgarh, and Seemapuri constituencies respectively. AAP’s Pawan Sharma also kept his Adarsh Nagar seat, defeating BJP’s Raj Kumar Bhatia by over 1,500 votes. Ambedkar Nagar, a reserved constituency, was retained by AAP’s Ajay Dutt by a margin of over 28,000 votes. Chatarpur’s Kartar Singh Tanwar, Deoli’s Prakash Jarwal, Saurabh Bhardwaj from Greater Kailash, Nangloi’s Raghuvinder Shokeen and Mangolpuri’s Rakhi Birla also retained their seats.
AAP’s Atishi also won her debut Assembly polls. One of the most popular faces of the Aam Aadmi Party, had a tough fight. She bagged the seat with over 11,000 votes defeating BJP’s Dharmabir Singh, who got 39,438 votes against Atishi, who polled 46,775 votes.
As many as 44 sitting MLAs including two from the BJP retained their seats in the high-pitch Delhi Assembly elections. The two BJP MLAs — Vijender Gupta from Rohini and OP Sharma from Vishwas Nagar — retained their seats with comfortable margins of over 12,000 and over 16,000 votes respectively. Anil Kumar Bajpai, former AAP MLA from Gandhi Nagar, retained his seat not from AAP but BJP.
Aam Admi Party’s Raghav Chadha, the 31-year-old chartered accountant-turned-politician, won from central Delhi’s Rajinder Nagar by defeating BJP veteran Sardar RP Singh by nearly 20,000 votes. This is the first time that the young AAP leader contested an assembly election. He had last year unsuccessfully contested the Lok Sabha election from South Delhi.
AAP also won all 12 seats reserved for SC candidates