Before elections both the Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) bigwigs such as Sheila Dikshit and Harsh Vardhan had dismissed the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) as a minor player in the electoral battle for Delhi assembly. On the one hand Dikshit has gone silent after the exit poll results came out. However, on the other hand, even BJP is not celebrating, perhaps, recalling the 2008 exit polls that predicted a clear majority for the party.
With the exit poll results in hand now, the BJP on Friday conceded that the rookie could have deprived it of the anti-incumbency votes to some extent in the national capital.
‘Yes, there is no doubt that the presence of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) might have made this contest triangular,’ said Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee chief JP Agarwal.
Asked about AAP gaining anti-incumbency votes at the cost of the main opposition party, Delhi BJP chief Vijay Goel agreed that the Aam Aadmi Party has to some extent ‘broken into anti-incumbency votes which used to come to BJP.
The state unit chief, however, was confident that his party will get a clear majority in the elections.
‘People want a change from the 15 years of misgovernance of Congress. They want relief from problems such as electricity, water, inflation and corruption. People want change and it is only the BJP which can give them that change,’ he said.
Asked about the expected numbers of seats, Goel said, ‘clear majority begins with 36 seats’ in the 70-seat assembly.
BJP’s chief ministerial candidate Harsh Vardhan refrained from making any political comment but on sustained questioning about the expected results, he replied in a lighter vein, ‘We have studied throughout the year, the exams were good and we expect good results.’
On the other hand most Congress leaders are not expecting the party to come back to power. Agarwal said that unauthorised colonies, jhhugi-jhhopadi slums and Muslims form the major vote bank of the Congress, but in this election the votes have been snatched away by AAP.
With the exit poll results in hand now, the BJP on Friday conceded that the rookie could have deprived it of the anti-incumbency votes to some extent in the national capital.
‘Yes, there is no doubt that the presence of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) might have made this contest triangular,’ said Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee chief JP Agarwal.
Asked about AAP gaining anti-incumbency votes at the cost of the main opposition party, Delhi BJP chief Vijay Goel agreed that the Aam Aadmi Party has to some extent ‘broken into anti-incumbency votes which used to come to BJP.
The state unit chief, however, was confident that his party will get a clear majority in the elections.
‘People want a change from the 15 years of misgovernance of Congress. They want relief from problems such as electricity, water, inflation and corruption. People want change and it is only the BJP which can give them that change,’ he said.
Asked about the expected numbers of seats, Goel said, ‘clear majority begins with 36 seats’ in the 70-seat assembly.
BJP’s chief ministerial candidate Harsh Vardhan refrained from making any political comment but on sustained questioning about the expected results, he replied in a lighter vein, ‘We have studied throughout the year, the exams were good and we expect good results.’
On the other hand most Congress leaders are not expecting the party to come back to power. Agarwal said that unauthorised colonies, jhhugi-jhhopadi slums and Muslims form the major vote bank of the Congress, but in this election the votes have been snatched away by AAP.