In a landslide win, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has secured control over the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) for which counting was held on Wednesday.
In a first, AAP won the MCD elections by 7281 votes. The Arvind Kejriwal party got 134 seats, while Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which had been ruling MCD for the past 15 years got 104 seats, while Congress lagged with just nine seats and three independent candidates won seats in different wards.
The AAP and BJP, both currently controlling parts of Delhi's administration through state and central governments, saw this is a prestige battle. These were the first civic elections after the MCD — divided into three, area-wise, around 10 years ago — was reunified and the wards redrawn after the latest term of the BJP ended early this year.
With 250 wards in the MCD, a party needs 126 to win. The voting in the national capital was held on December 4. There were a total of 1,349 candidates in the fray and the voter turnout was around 50 percent.
After AAP crossed the halfway mark with 134 seats, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal thanked the people for AAP's victory and sought the cooperation of the BJP and the Congress as well as the "blessings" of the Centre and Prime Minister Narendra Modi to improve civic amenities here. Addressing party workers at the headquarters, Kejriwal said, "Will try to live up to expectations of people, urge parties to come together to improve Delhi."
He further said, "I want to congratulate the people of Delhi. I was watching the results yesterday. People have yet again expressed their faith in the AAP," he added.
The AAP office saw massive celebrations with the dhol and kids dressed as Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. The office had kept balloons and celebratory posters ready since morning.
Further cementing the disappearance of the Congress from a city it once governed, the party ended up with just nine of the 250 wards in the MCD election results declared on Wednesday, which also saw a sharp dip in its vote share. In 2017, when the MCD was a three-corporation body, the Congress had won overall 30 seats and had a vote share of around 21%. It has ended up with 11.68% votes this time, with clearly no one persuaded by the party's tactic of harking Sheila Dikshit's legacy as a last-minute sort.
Congress senior leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi shared his disappointment and took to Twitter wrote, "Although it's nice to see a tightly contested election between AAP & BJP, I am deeply disappointed at Congress result. Introspection and structural change vital."
Meanwhile, AAP failed to win in major Muslim dominated areas. Congress also won seats in wards which witnessed Delhi riots in 2020. Wards like Brijpuri, Mustafabad, Kabir Nagar and Shastri Park.
Meanwhile, wards like Zakir Nagar and Abul Fazal Enclave also saw Congress winning these seats. "There was disappointed towards APP, especially with its silence on the Anti-Muslim riots in Delhi. Plus, its disappointing statements on putting Hindu god pictures on the notes, showed they are doing exactly what the BJP was doing," Abdul, a resident of Zakir Nagar, told The Citizen.
Meanwhile, AAP's Jalaj Kumar won from Shalimar Bagh-A by 3188 votes against BJP's Sujeet Thakur while BJP's Rekha Gupta defeated AAP's Ishupreet Kaur Gujral by 5644 votes.
BJP's Smita and Pravesh Wahi have won from Rohini-D and Rohini -E wards. While Smita defeated AAP's Anupriya Misha by 1888 votes, Wahi defeated AAP's Kuldeep Mittal by 8035 votes.
Congress's Mandeep Singh has won from Nihal Vihar by 566 votes against his closest rival Ashok Bhardwaj of Aam Aadmi Party.
Interestingly, wards like Seelampur, Isapur and Mundka saw independent candidates winning these elections. From Seelampur independent candidate Shakila Begum has won, while Bharatiya Janata Party's Seema Sharma as the runner up. In Isapur independent candidate Meena Devi won and Gajender Singh Daral won from Mundka.
Also, as a first, Delhi MCD got its first transgender member. Sultanpur's Bobi Kinnar or Bobi darling, as popularly called, will be the first transgender member of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi after winning from Sultanpuri A.
This was the first time AAP fielded a transgender person in the election and now with the victory, it will also be the first time that the MCD will have a transgender member.
This was not the first time that Bobi contested the MCD election. In 2017, Bobi contested as an independent candidate.
Bobi is famous in Sultanpuri because of her/their extensive social work. Bobi is the president of the Delhi unit of the Hindu Yuva Samaj Ekta Awam Anti-Terrorism Committee.
BJP and AAP have been tussling over the issues in MCD with both parties blaming each other. With AAP winning, it would be interesting to see how the party changes things, especially with experts signalling towards chaos and corruption in MCD.
For counting, the election commission had set up 42 counting centres across the city for the counting of votes. Election observers, and 136 engineers from Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL) were also deployed.