MCD polls as 2024 bellwether? BJP ‘trails’ AAP in 5 of 7 Delhi Lok Sabha seats

The AAP bagged 134 of the MCD’s total 250 wards, the BJP won 104 wards, while the Congress came a distant third with only nine seats.

Despite the BJP’s defeat in the MCD polls, many of its leaders said the party gave a tough fight to the AAP despite having been the incumbent in the civic body for three consecutive terms since 2007.

According to a BJP analysis of the MCD election results, its extrapolation to the parties’ performance and prospects in the general elections indicates that the AAP would be ahead of the BJP in five of the seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi. The BJP currently has all seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi — which was also the case in the 2014 general elections.

According to this analysis conducted by some BJP leaders, the two Lok Sabha constituencies where the party would get the lead over the AAP include East Delhi and North East Delhi being represented by Gautam Gambhir and Manoj Tiwari, respectively. The Chandni Chowk seat would have been a close fight, which is represented by Harsh Vardhan.
Other BJP MPs from the national capital include Parvesh Verma from the West Delhi constituency, Hansraj Hans from North West Delhi, Ramesh Bidhuri from South Delhi and Meenakshi Lekhi from the New Delhi seat.

According to BJP insiders, going by extrapolation of the MCD poll data, the margin of the party’s losses would be bigger in the South Delhi, West Delhi and North West Delhi constituencies. “The performance in New Delhi was also below par, but a large chunk of the area there comes under the New Delhi Municipal Council, which does not vote in MCD polls. The remaining areas have been AAP strongholds,” said a senior party leader. However, a key point remains that the patterns of any electorate’s voting differ depending on the nature of elections, which have been repeatedly demonstrated by the voters of Delhi as well as several other cities and states in the country.

Some BJP leaders also point out that such an extrapolation of the MCD election data would be “unfair” as the Lok Sabha polls are a different ball game.

“The BJP’s face of the Lok Sabha elections is Prime Minister Narendra Modi. For MCD elections neither he nor Union Home Minister Amit Shah held any rallies. The expectation of voters from the MCD councillors is also very different. While these assessments are done after every poll, it is not a simple equation. That said, all MPs should be aware of the arithmetic in their constituencies so that they can work on their shortcomings,” said a senior BJP leader.

The AAP camp also seemed to be wary of such an analysis. “We know for a fact that people vote differently based on the nature of the election. While winning the polls is a shot in the arm to our party, to think that we are ahead of the BJP in the Lok Sabha polls based just on this would be naive,” said an AAP leader.

A testament to the varied patterns of the electors’ mandates in Delhi comes in the form of poll results since 2013. The AAP won 28 seats as against the BJP’s 32 in the 2013 Delhi Assembly polls. In the Lok Sabha polls next year, the BJP bagged all seven seats. In the 2015 Delhi Assembly polls, the AAP swept the elections by winning 67 out of 70 seats after having resigned from the government (formed with the outside support of Congress) in 49 days.

In the 2017 MCD polls, the BJP managed to retain power, even as the party also won all seven seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. In the 2020 Assembly polls, however, the saffron party again lost at the hands of the AAP, getting only eight seats as compared to the AAP’s 62.