BJP’s Praveen Khandelwal defeats three-time MP to win Chandni Chowk seat

Khandelwal got 516,496 votes, defeating five-time MP Jai Prakash Aggarwal from Congress by a margin of 89,325

New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Tuesday clinched the Chandni Chowk Lok Sabha constituency in Delhi for the third consecutive time, with its candidate Praveen Khandelwal winning the seat.

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate Praveen Khandelwal won by a margin of 89,325 (Twitter/ video screengrab)

Khandelwal got 516,496 votes, defeating three-time MP from Chandni Chowk, Jai Prakash Aggarwal, of Congress by a margin of 89,325.

Aggarwal, 79, was the oldest candidate in Delhi and had previously won the Chandni Chowk seat three times in 1984, 1989 and 1996. He, however, lost it in 2019. This time, Aggarwal secured 427,171 votes.

In 2019, the Chandni Chowk seat saw an interesting three-way fight between BJP’s Harsh Wardhan, Congress’ JP Aggarwal, and Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) Pankaj Kumar Gupta. The BJP received over 52.92% of the votes and won by a margin of 2.28 lakh votes.

The Chandni Chowk Lok Sabha constituency has over 1.6 million voters and comprises 10 assembly segments – Model Town, Tri Nagar, Shakur Basti, Shalimar Bagh, Adarsh Nagar, Chandni Chowk, Sadar Bazar, Ballimaran, Wazirpur and Matia Mahal. The voters did show a clear mandate for the BJP candidate, but the victory margin was reduced compared to the previous election.

After his victory, Khandelwal spoke to HT and said that he had been waiting for this opportunity to perform and bring change to the people.

“During the campaign, I had said that I would make myself completely approachable to the people and would sit in the market on the streets to listen to people’s grievances. I will ensure that I do that as an MP. I have always worked in the interest of traders and will now have the authority to bring changes for them. Simplification of GST to ensure compliance, training of traders to use technology in businesses, development of JJ colonies and infrastructure development in the market areas are going to be some of our priorities,” said Khandelwal.

In the manifesto released earlier, Khandelwal had promised to resolve multiple issues, from traffic to water supply, clean drains, constructing flyovers, building health infrastructure and conserving heritage structures.