After the Lok Sabha elections, the BJP’s NDA government has been formed at the center. However, unlike the last two times, this time BJP has not got a majority on its own. Now various political parties are eyeing the upcoming assembly elections, which also includes Delhi. Assembly elections are to be held in the national capital early next year. For this, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), BJP and Congress have already started preparations.
BJP is trying to perform better in the assembly elections this time, just like the party’s spectacular victory in Delhi in the Lok Sabha elections. In this Lok Sabha election, BJP has won all the seven seats in Delhi for the third time in a row. However, the average of BJP’s victory in all the seats in Delhi in this election has been less. Compared to the last Lok Sabha, this time BJP’s vote percentage was about 6.4 percent less. Last time BJP got 56 percent votes, whereas this time it got 52 percent. Congress and AAP fought the elections together this time. AAP had fielded candidates on four seats and Congress on three seats.
Despite this, there was not much change in the vote average of both. AAP Convenor and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal went back to Tihar Jail on June 2 after completing the 21-day bail period granted by the Supreme Court for election campaign. In his absence, his wife Sunita Kejriwal held a review meeting of the election results. After that meeting, AAP’s Delhi Convenor and Delhi Government Minister Gopal Rai announced that AAP’s alliance with Congress was only for the Lok Sabha elections. AAP will contest the assembly elections alone. After that, Delhi Congress’s new president Devendra Yadav also reiterated the same thing. That is, Delhi’s assembly election is sure to be triangular.
For the last several years, the mandate of Lok Sabha, assembly and municipal elections in Delhi has been different. BJP has been winning the Lok Sabha elections continuously since 2014, while AAP has won the assembly elections of 2015 and 2020. BJP won the municipal elections three times in a row, but in the year 2022, AAP captured the corporation. If we look at the Lok Sabha elections, BJP has a lead in 52 out of the total 70 seats of Delhi Assembly. Although, in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, BJP had a lead in 65 assembly seats, but it could get only eight seats in the assembly elections. Actually, the biggest challenge for BJP is to prepare a leader in Delhi to compete with Chief Minister Kejriwal. The second concern is that BJP did not get a lead in assembly constituencies like New Delhi, Delhi Cantonment, Rajouri Garden, Tilak Nagar etc. in this Lok Sabha election.
