With 5 Muslim MLAs, community voters switch over to AAP
New Delhi: The victory of five Muslim candidates put up by the Aam Aadmi Party over their BJP and Congress rivals in community-dominated seats in Delhi clearly indicates that the minority voters from these segments prefer the ruling party to take over BJP. While Delhi Congress again got humiliating defeat in a bitterly-fought contest that took place amid massive protests over the new citizenship law.
Several Congress stalwart such as Perwaze Hashmi, former Union Minister Krishna Tirath and Four times former Congress Minister Dr Ashok Kumar Walia also got bite the dust. The Congress had held sway over the minority voters in Delhi till 2013 when Sheila Dikshit was around. The Congress leaders claim that excessive polarisation led to the party's rout this time, even though the opposition party had come all out in support of the protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act across the country.
Reacting to the poll outcome, Congress leader Sandeep Dikshit said that "the excessive polarisation of voters hurt our prospects as Muslims did not believe that we can defeat the BJP in Delhi." So the Muslims sided with the AAP, he reasoned. AAP's Amanatullah Khan again won from the Okhla seat with 71,000 margins, where Congress candidate Parvez Hashmi failed to save his deposit.
In Seelampur, AAP's Abdul Rehman defeated the BJP's Sanjay Jain even as Congress rival Matin Ahmed, who has been a five-time MLA, came a poor third. In the Ballimaran seat, AAP candidate Imran Hussain won over the BJP's Lata Sodhi, apart from five-time MLA and ex-minister Haroon Yusuf, who came third.
In Matia Mahal, Shoaib Iqbal won convincingly against Ravinder Gupta of the BJP and Mirza Javed Ali of the Congress.
In Mustafabad, AAP's Haji Yunus defeated the BJP's Jagdish Pradhan even as Congress candidate Ali Mehdi could not cross the five-digit vote figure.
Ironically, Mustafabad was one of the three seats won by the BJP in the 2015 Assembly polls. While Kejriwal was the star campaigner for the AAP, Prime Minister Modi, Shah, and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath were among those who extensively campaigned for the BJP.
The Congress got into campaign mode much later. Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and party leaders Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi were among those who campaigned for the Congress.
Reacting to the AAP victory in the Muslim-dominated segments, AAP leader Mehmood Ahmed from Zakir Nagar said: "It's the work done by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal that gave us this huge victory. We have devoted all our time to public welfare, be it drinking water, sewage, or installing CCTVs."
