7-0 for BJP in Delhi as it fends off AAP-Cong challenge

New Delhi, Jun 4 (PTI) The BJP successfully fended off anti-incumbency and the challenge posed by the AAP-Congress combine to register a hat-trick in Delhi by winning all the seven Lok Sabha seats.

However, the victory margin reduced drastically since the 2019 elections.

The Aam Aadmi Party said despite adverse circumstances, their candidates gave a tough fight to the BJP in the city while asserting that the people have voted against the saffron party's politics of "hatred and dictatorship".

Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal mounted a blazing campaign in the hot summer after he was released from the Tihar jail on interim bail on May 10, drawing huge crowds at rallies and roadshows, but it proved insufficient to propel his AAP past the BJP challenge in the national capital.

The results show that AAP, despite becoming a national party, still has a long way to go before it can pose a challenge to the BJP at the national level.

BJP's poll debutant Yogendra Chandoliya from Northwest Delhi constituency trounced Congress' Udit Raj by over 2.90 lakh votes, registering the highest victory margin among all the winning candidates of the party.

In the 2019 general polls, BJP's candidates had won by margins ranging from over 2.28 lakh to 5.78 lakh but this time three of the candidates won by a margin of less than one lakh votes while only Chandoliya breached the two-lakh mark.

BJP's Kamaljeet Sehrawat from the West Delhi constituency defeated AAP's Mahabal Mishra by 1.99 lakh votes.

Bansuri Swaraj, daughter of late veteran leader Sushma Swaraj, defeated AAP's candidate Somnath Bharti to win the New Delhi seat with 78,370 votes, the lowest margin of victory among all winning candidates.

Swaraj, a first-timer, was fielded by the BJP in place of outgoing MP and Union Minister Meenakshi Lekhi.

In Northeast Delhi constituency, BJP candidate Manoj Tiwari registered a hat-trick by defeating Congress' Kanhaiya Kumar with 1.38 lakh votes while Ramvir Singh Bidhuri won the South Delhi seat with 1.24 lakh votes.

Tiwari was the only old candidate repeated by the party.

BJP candidate from Delhi's Chandni Chowk Lok Sabha seat Praveen Khandelwal defeated Congress veteran J P Agarwal by a margin of 89,325 votes.

The Bharatiya Janata Party's Harsh Malhotra, defeated AAP's Kuldeep Kumar to win the East Delhi Lok Sabha seat by a margin of 93,663 votes.

Malhotra, a first-timer, was fielded by the BJP in place of outgoing MP and ace cricketer Gautam Gambhir.

Meanwhile, celebrations erupted at BJP headquarters here as party workers danced to 'dhol' beats and chanted 'Modi' slogans.

Addressing a press conference here, AAP Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh said, "I want to bow down before the country's voters. Today, the election results are coming in. The picture is becoming clearer.

"These elections are a message from the public that they are tired of the 10-year rule of BJP and want to oust them. They are tired of inflation. It is the beauty of India's democracy that people have said to the BJP to go back," he said.

On its part, the BJP said that the people of Delhi have scripted "unprecedented history" by giving 7-0 for the third consecutive time.

"The development done by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government in Delhi has won and the people who have completely rejected the corruption of Arvind Kejriwal and the opportunism of Congress," Delhi BJP chief Virendra Sachdeva said.

The BJP leaders credited the third clean sweep in a row by the party mainly to the 'Modi' factor and the party's sustained attack on the Kejriwal government over its alleged involvement in corruption cases.

Right from PM Modi to chief ministers of various states who campaigned for the BJP in Delhi, everyone trained their guns at the Aam Aadmi Party calling it "kattar beimaan" (hardcore corrupt) and mocking its "unholy" alliance with the Congress.

Kejriwal was arrested on May 21, adding to the woes of AAP which was already facing the absence of its top leaders as former deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia is in jail in connection with the excise policy case and former health minister Satyendar Jain is behind bars in connection with a separate money laundering case.

Kejriwal's arrest put a spanner in the AAP's campaign and led to the delay in the announcement of the party's manifesto, a decision on the strategy of the party for the electoral battle and other outreach activities.

The campaign was moving at a snail's pace, with his wife Sunita Kejriwal trying to lead the charge.

While the BJP suffered surprising reverses in its strongholds in Hindi heartland states like neighbouring Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Rajasthan, the party scored a hat-trick of wins in the national capital. The BJP's gamble of replacing all its candidates barring one paid off.

Although the AAP drew a blank in the national capital, its vote share registered an impressive increase of nearly six per cent as compared to 2019 Lok Sabha polls while the winner BJP lost its polled votes by nearly two per cent as compared to the parliamentary polls.

The Congress, which failed to win any of the three seats of Northeast Delhi, Chandni Chowk and Northwest Delhi, lost its vote share by over three per cent as compared to the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

The BJP's vote share of 54.33 per cent yielded a clean sweep of all the seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi for the third time in a row.

Its vote shares in 2019 and 2014 polls were 56.7 per cent and 46.6 per cent, respectively.

The turnout in the May 25 Lok Sabha polls for seven parliamentary constituencies in Delhi was 58.69 per cent The AAP contested a total of 22 seats: 13 in Punjab, four in Delhi, two each in Gujarat (Bharuch and Bhavnagar) and Assam (Sonitpur and Dibrugarh) and one in Haryana (Kurukshetra). The party drew a blank in Gujarat, Delhi and Assam. In Punjab, the ruling AAP won only three seats.

As many as 148 out of 162 (91 per cent) candidates on seven seats have lost their security deposit in the Lok Sabha elections in Delhi, according to the Election Commission.

In Chandani Chowk 23, New Delhi 15, South Delhi 20, East Delhi 18, West Delhi 22, North East Delhi 26 and North West Delhi 24 candidates have forfeited their deposit.

On its own, the BJP appeared to be falling below the majority mark with leads in 240 seats despite significant gains in Odisha, Telangana and Kerala, giving some solace to the party after the unexpected losses in the Hindi belt.

As BJP fell short of a majority, AAP leader Saurabh Bharadwaj said the ball was now in the court of NDA allies N. Chandrababu Naidu's TDP and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's JD(U) who once united the opposition against Modi.

Taking to his social media handle on X, Bharadwaj reposed his faith in the TDP and JD(U) leadership to prevent the BJP from forming its government.

"Interesting facts - In 2019, Mr. Chandrababu Naidu visited all opposition leaders to unite them against Modi and in 2024 Mr Nitish Kumar visited all opposition leaders to unite them against Modi. Now, over to them," he wrote alongside a picture of the two leaders shaking hands.

The Lok Sabha election results also set the tone for the Assembly elections next year in Delhi as the BJP, despite stamping its authority in Lok Sabha polls, has failed to dent the AAP's prospects in the national capital.

The AAP has registered landslide victories in Delhi in 2015 and 2020 winning 67 and 62 seats respectively out of 70 constituencies but has drawn a blank in Lok Sabha polls. PTI SLB VIT SJJ NSM NIT BM ALK BUN RT