The Bharatiya Janata Party’s stupendous performance in national Capital, where it swept all seven seats, saw its vote share surge in comparison to the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.
As per the data made available by the Election Commission, the BJP’s vote share in the 2019 polls was nearly 56 per cent. In East Delhi, Gautam Gambhir of the BJP defeated education reformist Atishi Marlena of AAP. Gambhir registered his win by 3,90,391 votes. He polled 55.35 per cent of all votes and his nearest rival was former Delhi education minister Arvinder Singh Lovely of the Congress who polled 24.24 percent votes. Atishi finished third polling 17.44 per cent votes.
Another interesting battle was fought in North East Delhi. Here, sitting Bhojpuri singer and Delhi BJP president Manoj Tiwari defeated former CM Sheila Dikshit of the Congress by 3,63,971 votes. While Tiwari polled 53.86 per cent votes, Dikshit, who was CM of Delhi for 15 years, got 28.89 per cent. She had said before the voting that she did not want to contest but was obeying party orders. Dilip Pandey of AAP came third and polled 13.07 percent of the total votes.
The biggest margin of victory in Delhi was again scored by West Delhi MP Parvesh Verma, who got 60.05 per cent of the votes and won by over 5,76,290 votes against former MP Mahabal Mishra of the Congress who got 19.92 percent votes. Balbir Singh Jakhar of AAP came a distant third, polling 17.47 per cent votes.
Union minister Harsh Vardhan retained his Chandni Chowk seat by defeating four-time former MP JP Agarwal of the Congress by over 2.27 lakh votes. While Vardhan polled 52.96 percent votes, Agarwal secured 29.65 percent. Pankaj Kumar Gupta of AAP took the third position with a 14.75 percent vote share.
In New Delhi, lawyer Meenakshi Lekhi of BJP led former Union Minister Ajay Maken of Congress by over 2.55 lakh votes. She polled 54.77 per cent of all votes. Maken, who had quit as Delhi Congress president in January, had declared that he would only contest the seat if there was an alliance with AAP. However, despite the two parties not being able to stitch up an arrangement, he was pushed into the contest. He ended up picking up 26.91per cent votes. Brijesh Goyal of AAP garnered 16.33 percent of the votes.
The two seats where AAP candidates came second were South Delhi and North West Delhi. In South Delhi, Ramesh Bidhuri was ahead of Raghav Chadha of AAP by over 3.62 lakh votes.
Here boxer Vijender Singh of the Congress could not put up a proper fight as some of the senior party leaders stayed away due to the party ignoring their claims for the seat. While Bidhuri got 56.56 percent votes, Chadha followed with 26.37 percent and Vijender with 13.56 percent.
Likewise, in the SC reserved North West Delhi seat, Sufi singer Hans Raj Hans led his AAP rival Gugan Singh by over 5.53 lakh votes. Here too, the Congress candidate, former legislator Rajesh Lilothia, suffered due to infighting in the party.
His prospects suffered as former Delhi minister Raj Kumar Chauhan resigned and joined the BJP. Earlier another former Congress MP from the seat, Krishna Tirath, had distanced herself from the party. In the end, Hans got 60.47 percent of the votes, followed by Singh at 21.02 percent and Lilothia at 16.89 percent.
