By Mallica Joshi
For two months, conversations — and headlines — around Aam Aadmi Party and Congress revolved around whether the two parties will tie up in the capital. Thursday showed it wouldn’t have mattered.With a 56.58% vote share and at least 53% for each individual BJP candidate in the city, no seat combination between AAP and Congress would have worked.
With BJP taking pole position in all seven seats, perhaps a bigger worry for AAP turned out to be the Congress, which got 22% of votes in the capital, above its 18%. This is the first time since AAP was formed that Congress secured more votes — be it in Lok Sabha, assembly or municipal body polls. While Congress came in second in five seats, AAP stood second in two — South Delhi and North West Delhi.
In its first-ever assembly election in 2013, AAP had attracted 29% of all votes polled as opposed to Congress’s 25%.
In the 2014 general elections, BJP’s vote share was 46.63%, AAP’s was 33.07% and Congress’s was 15.22%. “This is a national election and this was amply clear in the minds of the voter. The Congress also created a lot of confusion. This, along with what can only be called a Modi wave, sealed the elections,” Deputy Chief Minister and AAP political affairs committee member Manish Sisodia told The Indian Express.
Thursday’s closest competition was seen in Chandni Chowk, where BJP’s Dr Harsh Vardhan won, defeating Congress’s JP Agarwal by over 1.71 lakh votes.The biggest margin was in North West Delhi, where Hans Raj Hans — declared as a BJP candidate on the last day of nominations — won by a margin of 5.5 lakh votes. While BJP has made gains all across, the Congress having trumped AAP is a leg up for the party and a matter of worry for AAP, which is in power in the state.
AAP, which came into existence in 2012, had in the 2015 assembly elections reduced Congress’s vote share to a mere 9%. It had won 67 of 70 seats, while BJP won 3 and Congress 0. In every subsequent election, Congress has inched back while AAP’s vote tally has gone down.
Senior AAP leaders conceded that gains made by Congress could have serious implications for their party as the city heads into Assembly polls in less than nine months.
“During our surveys, we realised people were inclined to vote for Modi in these elections and Kejriwal in assembly polls. We saw this trend in 2014 Lok Sabha polls as well, when BJP won all seven seats in Delhi but AAP came to power in the state with a brute majority a year later. But the senior leadership has to realise that in 2014, we were in second place. Nine months is a long time and the resurgence of Congress is troublesome,” said a senior party leader.
Sisodia, however, said the party was confident they would regain the lost vote share next year. “Considerations in Lok Sabha and Assembly polls are different and people in Delhi have shown this in the past. We will bounce back from this,” he said.
All figures are until 6 pm
