The Aam Aadmi Party’s decade-long stint in power in Delhi ended on Saturday, with the party winning 22 seats in the capital’s 70-seat assembly – 14 short of a majority.
The Congress failed to win seats for the third time in a row. But it undercut the Arvind Kejriwal-led party in exactly 14 seats, costing the state ruling party dearly.
The Bharatiya Janata Party won all the 14 seats, with a victory margin in each of the constituencies that was lower than the votes polled by the Congress in those segments.
This comes just nine months after AAP and the Congress took on the BJP in the Lok Sabha elections in Delhi as part of the Opposition’s INDIA alliance.
The BJP won 48 seats in the Delhi assembly and will form the government in the union territory after 27 years.
The 14 seats where the Congress got crucial votes includes three high-profile seats that AAP leaders lost to the BJP – former chief minister Arvind Kejriwal from the New Delhi seat, former deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia from Jangpura and minister of health Saurabh Bhardwaj from Greater Kailash.
Kejriwal lost in his constituency by 4,089 votes to BJP leader Parvesh Verma, while the Congress’s Sandeep Dikshit got 4,568 votes. Sisodia lost his seat by 675 votes to Tarvinder Singh Marwah, with Farhad Suri of the Congress winning 7,350 votes.
Other constituencies where this pattern played out were Malviya Nagar, Nangloi Jat, Mehrauli, Kasturba Nagar, Timarpur, Trilokpuri, Badli, Madipur, Chhatarpur, Sangam Vihar and Rajinder Nagar.
In Kasturba Nagar, the Congress candidate, Abhishek Dutt, secured 8,402 more votes than AAP’s Ramesh Pahelwan. The BJP won the seat.
| Constituency | AAP losing candidate | Margin of Loss | Congress votes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 New Delhi | Arvind Kejriwal | 4,089 | 4,568 |
| 2 Jangpura | Manish Sisodia | 675 | 7,350 |
| 3 Greater Kailash | Saurabh Bharadwaj | 3,188 | 6,711 |
| 4 Malviya Natar | Somnath Bharti | 2,131 | 6,770 |
| 5 Trilokpuri Nangloi Jat | Anjana Parcha | 392 | 6,147 |
| 6 Nangloi Jat | Raghuvinder Shokeen | 26,251 | 32,028 |
| 7 Badli | Ajesh Yadav | 15,163 | 41,071 |
| 8 Madipur | Rakhi Birla | 10,899 | 17, 958 |
| 9 Kasturba Nagar | Ramesh Pahelwan | 19,450 | 27,019 |
| 10 Chhatarpur | Brahm Singh Tanwar | 6,239 | 6,601 |
| 11 Sangam Vihar | Dinesh Mohaniya | 344 | 15,863 |
| 12 Rajinder Nagar | Durgesh Pathak | 1,231 | 4,015 |
| 13 Mehrauli | Mahendra Choudhary | 1,782 | 9,338 |
| 14 Timarpur | Surinder Pal Singh | 1,168 | 8,361 |
Congress politicians were quick to point out the damage they inflicted on AAP. As the results unfolded, Amitabh Dubey, who is in charge of the the party’s research and monitoring, tweeted, “Those pointing the finger at Congress should remember who arrogantly decided to break the INDIA alliance and fight alone first.”
Last week, Scroll had reported that a section of AAP voters in Delhi were drifting to the Congress party. This was visible among Hindu voters, but more acute among Muslims, who said that the AAP leadership had not spoken up against anti-Muslim hate crimes.
Things began to sour between the alliance partners in the run up to the Haryana assembly elections in October 2024. The two parties could not reach a seat-sharing agreement and contested against each other, with the AAP winning more votes than the Congress’s losing margin in at least five seats in the state.
Two months later, Kejriwal dismissed an alliance with the party in the Delhi polls. “There is no possibility of any alliance with Congress,” he had tweeted.
