The BJP has registered a thumping victory in the Rajouri Garden Assembly bypoll in the national capital crushing the hopes of both the Congress and Aam Aadmi Party, which finished a distant third and even lost its deposit.
Celebrations in the winning camp broke out outside the counting centre at Hari Nagar after the result was announced a little before noon by the Delhi Chief Electoral Officer (DCEO) while the ruling AAP downplayed the result.
Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia said the result would have no bearing on the April 23 MCD polls.
Sisodia said the bypoll result is not a setback for the party while attributing it to disenchantment of the electorate due to forsaking of the constituency by party MLA Jarnail Singh.
BJP-SAD candidate Manjinder Singh Sirsa, who maintained his lead till the last round, was elected as the new MLA from the seat by a margin of 14,562 votes over Congress’s Meenakshi Chandela.
With this victory, the BJP’s count in the 70-member Delhi Assembly has gone up to four.
Chandela polled 25,950 votes whereas AAP’s Harjeet Singh polled 10,243 votes and lost his deposit.
Besides, there were three other candidates—Devender Singh Nagi (Purvanchal Mahapanchayat), Lalit Taak (All India Forward Bloc) and Hardeep Singh (Independent)—who too lost their deposits.
Sirsa, who is also the general secretary of the Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee, has been elected an MLA for the second time from the constituency.
From the first round of counting itself, Sirsa started with 3,396 votes relegating his political opponents— Chandela and Harjeet—at 2,385 and 529 votes and the trend continued, said an official.
For the bypoll around 47 per cent of the over 1.6 lakh electors had cast their vote on April 9.
