The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) looked set to retain power in Delhi for the third term with a comfortable majority while the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) appeared to improve its performance in the national capital as counting of votes for the assembly elections was underway on Tuesday.
According to trends by the Election Commission at 11:30am, the AAP was leading in 57 seats and the BJP in 13 of the 70 assembly constituencies. Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP had won a landslide 67 seats in the 2015 assembly elections, and the BJP three.
The Congress, which drew a blank in the 2015 assembly elections, did not appear to have made any gains on Tuesday.
The results were largely similar to the exit polls that predicted a clear majority for the AAP government and improved performance for the BJP.
On Tuesday, AAP’s Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh said: “Wait for the final results; we are going to register a massive win.”
The BJP’s Delhi chief, Manoj Tiwari, who earlier expressed confidence about his party’s performance, told news agency ANI: “We are not upset. The initial trend is not in our favour, but the exit polls were good. We are a little behind our estimate but we still hope that we will win.”
According to EC data at 11:30am, CM Kejriwal was leading from New Delhi over his nearest rival Sunil Kumar Yadav of the BJP by more than 6000 votes.
In Patparganj, however, deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia was trailing behind the BJP’s Ravinder Singh Negi by 754 votes at 11:30am. Four rounds of counting, out of 15, have been completed in the constituency so far.
Sisodia had come under attack by the BJP for expressing his support for the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) protesters in Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh.
Notably, the AAP’s Amanatullah Khan was also trailing behind BJP’s Braham Singh by just 194 votes in Okhla, the constituency that includes Shaheen Bagh.
The area has been at the centre of anti-CAA demonstration since the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) Union government moved to change the law in December 2019.
The constituency of Delhi environment minister Satyendar Jain, Shakur Basti, was also headed for a tight contest with the nearest BJP rival SC Vats.
As voting for the Delhi assembly elections ended on Saturday evening, five exit polls predicted a comfortable victory for the AAP, with the party expected to win anything between 47 seats (Times Now-Ipsos poll), which was the lowest estimate, to 68 seats (India Today-Axis poll), which was the highest estimate, in the assembly of 70 members.
The lowest estimate for the BJP was two seats (India Today-Axis) and the highest 23 (Times Now-Ipsos).
The Congress, all polls suggested, would come a distant third — either failing to secure any seat, according to two polls, or, at best, winning three seats (ABP News-CVoter).
Hindustan Times did not conduct any exit poll and cannot independently vouch for the methodology and the outcome of the different exit polls.
Voting on Saturday happened in the backdrop of an acrimonious campaign over the past few weeks.
Delhi appeared to see a small dip in voter turnout compared to the 2015 assembly polls, when a record 67.47% voters exercised their franchise. On Monday, the Election Commission announced the final voter turnout as 62.59%.
Over the course of the past month, the AAP focused mainly on the issues of local leadership, projecting Kejriwal as the CM, and fought the elections on its governance record — particularly improvements in public health, government schools, and providing electricity and water at subsidised rates.
The BJP sought votes in the name of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and banked heavily on polarisation as it made the protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, particularly in Shaheen Bagh, a central poll issue and alleged that the AAP was backing the Muslim-dominated agitation.
The AAP fielded 46 of its sitting MLAs from the same constituencies they contested in the 2015 polls, keeping in mind their “good work”, and introduced 23 fresh faces this time, including prominent leaders Raghav Chadha, Atishi and Dilip Pandey, who had unsuccessfully contested the 2019 Lok Sabha polls in Delhi.
