Delhi Chief Minister Atishi on Saturday defeated Bharatiya Janata Party candidate Ramesh Bidhuri in the Assembly election.

Atishi won by a margin of 3,521 votes, data from the Election Commission showed.

While the Aam Aadmi Party leader secured 52,154 votes, Bidhuri bagged 48,633 votes. The Congress’ Alka Lamba finished third with 4,392 votes.

She had won the seat in 2020 as well.

Follow Scroll’s coverage of the 2025 Delhi Assembly election result here.

Overall, however, the BJP defeated the Aam Aadmi Party in the Assembly polls.

As of 4 pm, the BJP had won 37 seats and was leading in 11 constituencies, data from the Election Commission showed. The Aam Aadmi Party had won 17 seats and was ahead in 5 places.

The halfway mark to gain a majority in the 70-member Assembly is 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.

Also read: Ramesh Bidhuri and the descent of India