Eight of the nine women candidates fielded by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) won the Delhi assembly polls with comfortable margins.
Among the newly-elected women members of the legislative assembly (MLAs) from AAP were Atishi from Kalkaji, Preeti Tomar from Tri Nagar, Raj Kumari Dhillon from Hari Nagar and Dhanwati Chandela from Rajouri Garden. Those who got re-elected were Pramila Tokas (RK Puram), Bandana Kumari (Shalimar Bagh), Rakhi Birla (Mangolpuri) and Bhavna Gaur (Palam).
The only woman candidate from the AAP who lost was Sarita Singh from Rohtas Nagar. Singh lost to BJP’s Jitender Mahajan by a margin of 12,988 votes. The AAP, BJP, and Congress had together fielded 24 women candidates. The Congress had fielded 10 women candidates and the BJP five.
Northeast Delhi’s Mustafabad sprang a surprise when AAP, after 20 rounds of counting, finally took the lead. The seat, which had 26 rounds of counting, had showed the BJP close to
victory, until the AAP edged ahead.
BJP lost the seat despite an increase in its candidates’ vote share by 7 percentage points. BJP’s Jagdish Pradhan, the last MLA from the seat , was defeated by AAP’s Haji Yunus by a comfortable margin of 20,704 votes. Yunus, the only repeat candidate by AAP among those who had lost the 2015 assembly polls, bagged a total of 98,850 (53.2%) votes while Pradhan received 78,146 (42.06%) .
The constituency had polled 70.55% votes. In 2015, Pradhan had won the seat with a vote share of 35.33% defeating Congress’s Hasan Ahmed, who had a vote share of 31.68%. Yunus was in the third position with a vote share of 30.13%.
As per the Election Commission of India (ECI) details, only 0.46% share of the total votes polled comprised of NOTA (None Of The Above) option. In the 2015 polls, NOTA had registered a vote share of 0.40%.
Besides the three main rivals, the other political parties in the fray such as Bahujan Samaj Party got 0.71% vote share, Janata Dal (United) 0.91%, Lok Janshakti Party 0.35%, Nationalist Congress Party 0.02%, Communist Party of India 0.02% and Communist Party of India (Marxist) 0.01%.