Delhi Chief Minister Atishi was on Saturday leading against Bharatiya Janata Party leader Ramesh Bidhuri in the Assembly election.

After 11 rounds of counting as of 1.35 pm, the Aam Aadmi Party leader was ahead of her BJP rival by 2,795 votes in the Kalkaji constituency, data from the Election Commission showed.

While Atishi had secured 47,267 votes, Bidhuri had bagged 44,472 votes. Congress candidate Alka Lamba was in third place with 3,803 votes.

Atishi had won the seat in 2020.

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Overall, the Aam Aadmi Party was trailing the BJP in Delhi. The BJP was ahead in 47 seats, while the Aam Aadmi Party was leading in 23 constituencies at 1 pm.

The halfway mark for the 70-member Delhi Assembly in 36 seats.

Atishi had taken over as the chief minister after Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal resigned from the post on September 17, a week after he was released on bail in the Delhi liquor policy case. He had been arrested in March ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha election.

The Aam Aadmi Party chief had said that he will return to the post only after voters have expressed their support for him in the Assembly election.

In the run-up to the election, Bidhuri sparked a row on January 5 with his remarks about Atishi and Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra.

At a rally, Bidhuri claimed that former Bihar Chief Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav had said that he would make roads in the state “as smooth as [BJP leader and actor] Hema Malini’s cheeks”.

Saying that Yadav had lied, Bidhuri said: “But I assure you, just like we improved roads in Okhla and Sangam Vihar, we will definitely make all roads in Kalkaji as smooth as Priyanka Gandhi’s cheeks.”

At another event later in the day, Bidhuri claimed that Atishi had dropped her surname Marlena and used Singh instead.

“Marlena has become Singh,” he had said. “She changed her father. She was Marlena earlier, but has become Singh now.”

Atishi had used Marlena as her surname till 2018. She dropped it and began using Singh as her surname after it was alleged that she was trying to polarise votes. Marlena is a portmanteau of the names of political thinker Karl Marx and Russian revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin.

The Aam Aadmi Party and the Congress had called Bidhuri’s comments “anti-women”.

Bidhuri had sparked a row in September 2023 as well, after using communal slurs in Parliament against Danish Ali, a Lok Sabha MP from the Bahujan Samaj Party at the time.

Bidhuri, the South Delhi MP at the time, had made the remarks during a parliamentary debate on the success of India’s Chandrayaan-3 lunar mission.

The matter was subsequently referred to the Lok Sabha Privileges Committee.

The BJP had not fielded Bidhuri from the South Delhi seat in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

This is a developing story. It will be updated as new details are available.

Also read: Ramesh Bidhuri and the descent of India