The Delhi Assembly election result has shown that the voters have rejected “shortcut politics”, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Saturday.

The Bharatiya Janata Party defeated the Aam Aadmi Party in the polls. While the BJP won in 48 constituencies, the Aam Aadmi Party bagged 21 seats. The halfway mark to gain a majority in the 70-member Assembly is 36 seats.

With this, the Hindutva party will return to power in the national capital after 26 years.

“They [AAP] were arrogant, thinking they owned Delhi, but they have now faced the truth,” Modi said while addressing BJP workers at the party headquarters. “Delhi’s mandate makes it clear that there is no place for lies in politics or shortcuts to power.”

“The people have short-circuited shortcut politics,” Modi said.

The prime minister alleged that “a party that was born out of an anti-corruption agitation became completely indulged” in corruption.

The Aam Aadmi Party was founded in 2012 following a nationwide anti-corruption movement in 2011.

“Their chief minister and ministers were sent to jail because of corruption,” Modi said, in an apparent reference to the Delhi liquor policy case.

Modi promised that the party’s “double engine government” will develop Delhi at “double speed”, referring to the BJP-led governments at the Centre and at the Assembly level.

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As the election result became clear on Saturday afternoon, Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal conceded defeat. The party will not only play the role of a constructive Opposition, but also participate in community service, he said in a video posted on social media.

The Aam Aadmi Party chief congratulated the BJP and said that he hopes that the Hindutva party will deliver on the promises it had made to the voters.

The Aam Aadmi Party has been in power in the national capital since 2013, except for a year of president’s rule between 2014 and 2015.

In the 2020 polls, the Aam Aadmi Party won 62 seats with a 53.8% vote share. The remaining eight seats were won by the BJP, which secured 38.7% of the votes. With a 4.3% vote share, the Congress failed to win any seat.

The Aam Aadmi Party and the Congress contested the polls separately even though they are members of the Opposition INDIA bloc at the national level. In the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the Aam Aadmi Party-Congress alliance lost all seven parliamentary seats in Delhi to the BJP.

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