Even as the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) surged ahead in the counting of votes for the Delhi Assembly elections, Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia is facing a tough fight from Ravi Negi of the BJP for the Patparganj seat.
At one point Sisodia, who is also the education minister in the Delhi government, saw his lead whittled down to just over a hundred after two rounds of counting. Sisodia, who co-founded the AAP was expected to win the contest comfortably.
Patparganj in east Delhi, is one of the most important seats for the AAP after New Delhi constituency which is Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s seat.
Sisodia won the seat for two consecutive terms in 2013 and 2015 easily with his vote share in the constituency increasing from 41.5% (2013) to 53.5% (2015).
Laxman Rawat of the Congress is also in the fray. Sisodia and Kejriwal had focussed on turning the narrative towards issues like infrastructure, education, women safety, electricity, water during the campaign for the elections.
The constituency had been a Congress stronghold from 1998 till 2013 when Sisodia ended it. The BJP had last won the seat in 1993.
Five exit polls after the elections on Saturday predicted that the AAP would return to power comfortably while the BJP would win more than the three seats it won in 2015.
