In a major setback to the ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in Delhi, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-Akali Dal combine candidate Manjinder Singh Sirsa won the Rajouri Garden Assembly seat bypoll defeating his nearest rival Congress candidate Meenakshi Chandela by14,652 votes.
The bypoll result is being termed the most humiliating for the ruling AAP, which failed to gain even the one sixth of the total votes polled with AAP candidate Harjeet Singh forfeiting his security.
The Congress increased its tally of votes but what was unnerving for the party was that Meenakshi polled just 81 votes from the booth where the Delhi Congress president Ajay Maken had cast his vote. The AAP got 82 votes whereas the BJP embraced 350 votes at Maken’s polling booth.
Sirsa led from the very first round and after the final 17th round of counting, the Election Commission declared him a winner as he polled 40,602 votes while Chandela got 25,950 votes, and AAP’s Harjeet Singh got 10,243 out of total 78,091 votes polled during the April 9 byelection.
Nearly 1,300 votes were divided among the other contestants and all of them lost their security deposits.
Soon after winning the bypoll, Sirsa said this win will reflect in the civic polls too. “It is clear that the people are now rejecting the AAP. We will win MCD too with a thumping majority,” he said.
Delhi BJP president Manoj Tiwari said the BJP will win over 220 seats out of 272 in the municipal polls. “Rajouri Garden victory has given a momentum to the Delhi BJP,” said Tiwari.
The Rajouri Garden seat had fallen vacant after AAP’s legislator Jarnail Singh resigned to contest the Punjab Assembly polls. Sirsa had won this seat in 2013 Assembly poll also, but had lost to Jarnail Singh in the 2015 elections.
Elated at the win, the top brass in the BJP said people have given the AAP a befitting reply as the party “is on the verge of extinction”.
“Delhi has gone
two years back under Arvind Kejriwal regime,” said Harman Singh, a local business man.
Sukmeet Kaur, a active social worker in Khyala, said, “We were happy during the Sheila Dikshit’s Government. She had brought good infrastructure in Delhi.”