Alka Lamba, Congress candidate from Chandni Chowk in north Delhi, has conceded defeat in the Delhi Assembly elections for which counting is being held today.
Lamba said on Twitter that the election was polarised, and that Congress has to prepare for a long fight in Delhi.
“I accept the results, but not defeat. Hindu-Muslim votes were polarised. With new faces, Congress has to prepare for a new fight and a long struggle for people of Delhi. If we fight today, we will win tomorrow,” Lamba said in her tweet posted in Hindi.
मैं परिणाम स्वीकार करती हूँ,
पर हार नहीं,हिन्दू-मुस्लिम वोटों का पूरी तरह से ध्रुवीकरण किया गया.#कॉंग्रेस पार्टी को अब नए चेहरों के साथ एक नई लड़ाई और #दिल्ली की जनता के लिए एक लंबे संघर्ष के लिए तैयार होना पड़ेगा.
आज लड़ेंगे तो कल जीतेंगे भी 🇮🇳🙏.#DelhiElection2020 #Delhi
— Alka Lamba 🇮🇳 (@LambaAlka) February 11, 2020
She was contesting against five-time MLA Parlad Singh Sawhney of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Suman Kumar Gupta of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Lamba suffered a rout after four rounds of counting, securing just 869 votes as against 21,409 of Sawhney and 2,775 of Gupta.
Forty-four-year-old Lamba had won from Chandni Chowk on an AAP ticket in the 2015 elections, but she later quit the party after a bitter falling out with the AAP leadership and came back to Congress.
She was Delhi university Students’ Union (DUSU) president at the age of 19 in 1995-96. She has a BSc degree in Chemistry from DU’s Dyal Singh College. She had later joined Bundelkhand University in Uttar Pradesh.
Her successor to the DUSU top post, Rekha Gupta, said people in her constituency still know her as a “DU leader”.
The Congress too has performed miserably in the Assembly elections. The party, which was once in power the national capital, has failed to open account in today’s vote counting. Congress had failed to win a single seat in 2015.
Three hours after the counting began on Tuesday, the Congress had notched up just over 4.18 per cent of the votes against 52 per cent of AAP and 40 per cent of the BJP.
The Congress ran a low-profile, lackluster campaign for the elections. Its big guns – Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi – joined the campaign only towards the fag end of it.
