MCD Election: Victory important for AAP but signal from Muslims

AAP has secured Kalyanpuri, Rohini-C, Shalimar Bagh (North) and Trilokpuri seats of MCD.

BJP’s sweep has become clear in the Delhi Municipal Corporation by-election in 5 wards. The Aam Aadmi Party has won four seats. At the same time, a seat for the Congress has been brought.

The Aam Aadmi Party has won the Kalyanpuri, Rohini-C, Shalimar Bagh (North) and Trilokpuri seats of the MCD. At the same time, Congress has won from Chauhan Bangar ward. In the last election, the AAP had won four seats, while the BJP had one seat. These elections needed to be held after the demise of the BJP councilor in Shalimar Bagh and the resignation of four Aam Aadmi Party councilors.

In such a situation, after understanding the results, we understand 3 aspects of these results.

1. Dominance of Aam Aadmi Party

Aam Aadmi Party’s dominance is not lacking after the 2020 assembly elections. In the assembly elections, the party won 62 out of 70 seats.

The special thing of this by-election results is that AAP has also won in Rohini-C, which is the area which comes under the assembly segment of senior BJP leader Vijendra Gupta. Gupta is one of the few BJP leaders who won the 2020 elections.

The vote share of AAP has also been 46 percent in these five seats. In such a situation, the results are encouraging because the party has been an underperformer in the civic elections. In the 2017 MCD election, the party had to face heavy defeat. But after these results, in the 2020 MCD election, the party will enter with full confidence.
However, a warning sign is also visible for the Aam Aadmi Party, that is the result of the Chauhan Bangar seat.

2. Muslim community gave message in Chauhan Bangar

Congress has won a big victory in Chauhan Bangar ward. About 70 percent of the votes were received by the party, while the AAP could get only 20 percent of the votes. Chauhan Bangar, who came to North-East Delhi after the violence in February 2020, is a Muslim majority ward.

The results here show that there is a decline in the popularity of the Aam Aadmi Party in the Muslim community, it is the community that gave its support to the party in the 2020 assembly elections. This shows that many Muslims living here are believing that the AAP has not taken enough steps to stop the violence and that the relief work the party is coming is also not very satisfactory.

Overall, this decision is for AAP MLA Abdul Rahman from Seelampur, who has been a councilor from Chauhan Bangar. Talking about the Congress, the party has won the seat in Chauhan Bangar, but the vote share has fallen below 15 percent in the second ward.

3. BJP’s defeat

These results are disturbing for the BJP. The most worrying thing for the party is that the BJP gets 32–35 per cent vote share even in its worst times, but in these results, the BJP’s vote has come down to close to 27 per cent.

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It is telling that the voters of Delhi who vote for the BJP in the national level elections are turning to the Aam Aadmi Party at the local level and the state level. This was happening even when Sheila Dixit used to be the Chief Minister of Delhi. This was also seen in the elections of 2015 and 2020.

But this time the matter has moved a little further, it seems that those BJP voters who cannot decide at the local level are now voting for the Aam Aadmi Party without even seeing the face of Arvind Kejriwal.