With leads or wins available for all constituencies in the Delhi Assembly polls 2020, AAP seems poised to win with a thumping majority — 62 of 70 seats. However, this is five less than they won in 2015. This time around, they have ceded five seats to the BJP.
The BJP has leads in Gandhi Nagar, Ghonda, Karawal Nagar, Laxmi Nagar, Rohini, Rohtas Nagar and Vishwas Nagar. In 2015, the BJP had won in Rohini, Mustafabad and Vishwas Nagar.
In Gandhi Nagar, Anil Bajpai has a lead of over 5,000 votes against the AAP’s Naveen Chaudhary. Mr. Bajpai was one of the AAP MLAs who joined the BJP in 2019 during the Lok Sabha polls, and was then disqualified by the Speaker.
The BJP’s Kapil Mishra, also a rebel AAP MLA who joined the BJP, may be trailing in Model Town, but his old seat of Karawal Nagar has been appropriated by the BJP for now. Mohan Singh Bisht, a three-time MLA, lost in 2015 to Mr. Mishra by a landslide, but has regained that ground with a lead of over 8,000 votes.
Ghonda also saw the AAP trail by a massive margin of over 28,000 votes. In Laxmi Nagar, the BJP’s Abhay Verma is leading by a very slim margin of 880 votes against incumbent AAP MLA Nitin Tyagi.
Rohini is a seat that the BJP has retained, with the AAP unable to make any gains in the constituency. The saffron party’s sitting MLA Vijender Gupta sought re-election based on reconstruction of internal roads and better maintenance of street lights. The BJP has held sway over the seat for over a decade; except for the 2013 Delhi Assembly elections when the party’s Jai Bhagwan Aggarwal lost to the Aam Aadmi Party’s Rajesh Garg by close to 2,000 votes.
Rohtas Nagar is another constituency that the AAP has let slip out of its grasp. Incumbent MLA Sarita Singh lost to the BJP’s Jitender Mahajan by a margin of over 13,000 votes. The BJP has held on to Vishwas Nagar, with incumbent Om Prakash Sharma coming back with a larger margin than in 2015.