Tale of close fights & dwindling margins in AAP's Capital victory
New Delhi: The national Capital witnessed some close fights in the just-concluded Assembly elections which saw the electorates give the Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) a resounding victory and reject the politics of hate.
According to numbers, BJP conceded a comprehensive defeat — given the fact that only 8 months ago the saffron party had staged a stupendous victory where the party had swept all seven Lok Sabha seats in the 2019 election — nevertheless, the saffron party did put up a fight against the AAP in more than 10 constituencies which the latter had won comfortably in the previous battle for the Capital.
In the 2015 Assembly elections, AAP had won 36 seats which is the majority mark in the house, with more than 20 per cent victory margin. However, in 2020 Assembly elections this number was reduced to 22 seats.
The competition was fierce with less than 5 per cent margin in 13 Assembly seats out of which Kejriwal's AAP won 10 and the BJP was victorious in three seats. In 2015, the fights were bounded to six seats of which AAP won four.
It would be interesting to note that three of these constituencies namely Najafgarh, Laxmi Nagar and Krishna Nagar saw close fights between the parties this time too.
In the 2020 Assembly elections the AAP's candidate from Bijwasan constituency Bhupinder Singh Joon won by a slim margin of only 753 votes which is 0.6 per cent of the total votes polled in the constituency. However, in the previous Assembly polls, Col Devinder Sehrawat had won this seat for the AAP with a margin of 16.5 per cent that is 19,536 votes.
This time in Laxmi Nagar, BJP's Abhay Verma won by only 880 votes defeating its nearest rival AAP MLA Nitin Tyagi. AAP had won the seat with a margin of 4,846 votes (3.4 per cent) in the 2015 Assembly elections.
In Krishna Nagar, AAP's S K Bagga was closely challenged by Dr Anil Goyal of the BJP, beating him with a margin of merely 2.7 per cent, 3,995 votes, of total votes polled. However, Bagga had faced a tougher fight in the last Assembly polls when he defeated BJP's CM face Kiran Bedi by a margin of 1.7 per cent – 2,277 votes.
The Najafgarh constituency that falls under the parliamentary constituency of Parvesh Verma, BJP's vote share rose by 46 per cent but still failed to win. At the constituency, AAP's Kailash Gehlot won by a margin of 6,231 votes that is 3.8 per cent defeating BJP's Ajeet Singh. In 2015, Gehlot faced stiff competition from INLD's Bharat Singh and was able to win by a small margin of only 1,555 votes (1 per cent).
In Patparganj, AAP's heavyweight and Manish Sisodia had won by a huge margin of 20.5 per cent (28,791 votes) in 2015. This time, he scraped through with just 2.3 per cent (3,207 votes) after trailing in the initial rounds.
Meanwhile, Karawal Nagar witnessed a close contest between AAP and the saffron party where BJP's Mohan Bisht defeated AAP's hopeful Durgesh Pathak by 4.2 per cent of votes. It may be mentioned that this is the same constituency, where Kapil Mishra who is now with the BJP won from AAP in 2015 by a big margin of 44,431 votes or 26 per cent.
This time around, Kapil Mishra contested from Model Town only to be trounced by AAP's Akhilesh Pati Tripathi by a margin of more than 11,000 votes.
Moreover, in other constituencies like Adarsh Nagar, Kasturba Nagar, Chhatarpur, Kirari and Badarpur where AAP won by more than 15 per cent margins in 2015 saw close fights. In these seats, AAP was able to retain all the seats by a close margin of around 3 per cent or less, except Badarpur, where they lost to BJP by a margin of only 2 per cent.
With inputs from Agencies
