The Delhi Assembly elections results witnessed a division of Purvanchali votes as the BJP managed to win 10 of the 14 after it crushed the Aam Aadmi Party to return to power in Delhi after 27 years. Among the prominent Purvanchali candidates who have won this time from BJP are Laxmi Nagar candidate Abhay Verma, Kawawal Nagar candidate Kapil Mishra, Sangam Vihar candidate Chandan Kumar Chaudhary. AAP’s prominent Purvanchali candidates Gopal Rai from Babarpur, Sanjeev Jha from Burari, Anil Jha from Kirari won their respective assembly constituencies.
Purvanchalis, the migrants from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh estimated to account for nearly two-thirds of the voters in the national Capital, backed the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the last two elections. There appeared to be a growing disillusionment among the Purvanchali voters with the AAP. BJP’s Laxmi Nagar candidate Abhay Verma defeated AAP’s BB Tyagi by a margin of 11542 votes. Verma had won this seat in 2020 assembly elections also as he had defeated AAP’s BB Tyagi with a narrow margin. Similarly Kapila Mishra of BJP has defeated AAP’s has won the seat by a margin of 23355 by defeating AAP’s Manoj Tyagi. BJP’s Sangam Vihar candidate defeated AAP’s heavyweight Dinesh Mohania by a margin of 344 votes. Mohania was winning this seat since 2013.
AAP’s senior leader and former Delhi minister Gopal Rai retained Babarpur by defeating BJP’s by a margin of 18994 votes. Rai, who was Cabinet Minister in Arvind Kejriwal and Atishi led governments, has been wining this seat since 2015. Sanjeev Jha, AAP’s another prominent Purvanchali face, has won Burari seat on 4th consecutive term. Jha is MLA from the seat since 3013. Anil Jha, another leader from Purvanchal, has won Kirari assembly seat. Jha, who had recently joined the AAP from BJP, has defeated Bajrang Shukla by a margin of 21,871 votes. AAP’s Rituraj Jha, another Purvanchali leader, had won this seat in 2015 and 2020.
Meanwhile, a major chunk of voters, who were earlier shifted their base from Bihar, Eastern Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand and settled in Delhi, had supported the Aam Aadmi Party in 2013, 2015 and 2020 Lok Sabha elections. However, in 2025 assembly polls, they have shifted their support to the BJP as majority of the AAP candidates have been defeated by the saffron party candidates.
Among Purvanchal-majority seats, BJP’s Pradyumn Singh Rajput defeated AAP’s Vinay Mishra by a margin of 7829. From Malviya Nagar, BJPs’ Satish Upadhyay defeated AAP’s Somnath Bharti by a margin of 2131 votes. Bharti, a Purvanchali leader, was winning this seat since 2013. BJP’s Rajinder Nagar candidate Umang Bajaj defeated another Purvanchali leader of AAP Surgesh Pathak by a margin of 1231 votes. From Rohtash Nagar, BJP’s Jitender Mahajan won against AAP’s Sarita Singh with a margin of 27,902 votes. BJP also won Shalimar Bagh and Vikas Puri, both Purvanchali dominated seats as Rekha Gupta and Pankaj Kumar Singh emerged victorious.
Data from the last three censuses shows the share of migrants from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh (includes Uttarakhand and Jharkhand for the sake of consistency with the 1991 census) increased from a fifth to a fourth in Delhi’s population. Not all migrants from Uttar Pradesh can be qualified as Purvanchalis. The number of Purvanchali lawmakers in Delhi increased from two in the 1993, and 1998 elections to nine each in 2015 and 2020.