The Aam Aadmi Party(AAP) on Wednesday swept the municipal bypolls in Delhi winning four of the five seats while the Congress bagged one and the BJP drew a blank, prompting AAP chief and Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal to assert that the victory is an indication of the expected outcome of the MCD elections next year.
The ruling party of Delhi retained three wards–Rohini-C, Trilokpuri and Kalyanpuri–and also snatched the Shalimar Bagh ward from the BJP, media reports said.
The AAP, however, lost the Chauhan Bangar ward to Congress candidate Chaudhary Zubair Ahmad who bagged the seat by the biggest margin of 10,642 votes, the reports added.
Although the Congress managed to get one seat, the party claimed that Delhiites are now looking towards it to give the “Knockout punch” in the Municipal Corporation of Delhi(MCD) elections due in 2022.
The BJP, which has been ruling the civic bodies in the national capital for 15 years, alleged that the results clearly show that the Congress and AAP had teamed up with each other, and accused the rival parties of “match fixing” to defeat the saffron party.
The five seats fell vacant after AAP’s councillors had contested the assembly elections and won while the BJP’s Shalimar Bagh councillor had died.
AAP candidate Dhirender Kumar won the Kalyanpuri ward by 7,043 votes. The party candidate Vijay Kumar from Trilokpuri defeated BJP’s Om Prakash by a margin of 4,986 votes.
AAP’s Sunita Mishra defeated Surbhi Jaju of the BJP in Shalimar Bagh ward by 2,705 votes. The seat was earlier held by the BJP.
Ram Chander of the AAP defeated BJP candidate Rakesh Goyal by 2,985 votes in Rohini C ward.
More than 50 per cent votes were cast in the bypolls for the five civic wards under two municipal bodies on February 28. The three civic bodies in Delhi are the North Delhi Municipal Corporation(NDMC), South Delhi Municipal Corporation(SDMC) and the East Delhi Municipal Corporation(EDMC).
