NEW DELHI: Finally, what AAP thought happened, not in the exact measure, but in its historical proportion. The Arvind Kejriwal-led party ended the BJP’s 15-year rule over the MCD, bagging 134 of the 250 seats, forcing the BJP to settle at 104 and Congress at a distant 9 seats.
For AAP, it is a wish fulfilled: it now rules Delhi and the civic body whose unification from three separate bodies a few months back was thought to be a pro-BJP move.On Wednesday, the BJP could draw solace from a fragile fact: it has fared better than what was projected by exit polls.
The results humiliated the Congress as it won only nine seats and, worse, 188 of its 247 candidates lost their deposits. An element of history joined AAP’s win. It is for the first time that the AAP has managed to wrest power from the BJP in any of the battles of the ballot since the party’s birth a decade ago.
AAP has won two other elections the Delhi Assembly (2015 & 2019) and Punjab (2022). In all these polls, AAP swept the Congress off, while it faced defeat in BJP-ruled states like Uttarakhand, Goa and Uttar Pradesh.
In Delhi, AAP singularly targeted the city’s ever-rising three landfill sites, promising to remove the muck and squalor from Delhi’s midst. The BJP got back at AAP by selectively leaking video clips on the so-called corruption cases, including the Delhi excise scam.
In the previous elections, the BJP had trounced both the AAP and the Congress by winning 181 of 272 wards of the three municipal corporations. Kejriwal termed the “decisive victory” to be an affirmation for his party’s honest politics. “People of Delhi have now entrusted their son to clean Delhi and rid MCD of corruption. I won’t let them down,” he said at the AAP headquarters.
Delhi BJP chief Adesh Gupta said the people have given them almost 40% vote share along with 104 wards and responsibility as a strong opposition. As for the dispirited Congress, it claimed that the people have rejected the BJP.
Mayor watch
Tenure of MCD mayor is 1 year
Rules mandate that the first mayor is a woman while the third mayor has to be from the reserved category
AAP may field SC woman councillor for mayor
If she wins, she’ll have tenure of about four months as new mayor is sworn in every April
