MCD loss due to ticket distribution: Local BJP leaders

The party’s vote share picked up from 36.08% in 2017 to 39.08% this year, even as the party won just 104 of Delhi’s 250 municipal wards, compared to the AAP’s 134

Despite improving its vote share, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lost control of the Delhi municipal corporation to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) due to questionable candidate selection, said senior officials of the party, even as state president Adesh Gupta stepped down as leader of the local unit, in what is the first change since the electoral loss last week.

Adesh Gupta resigned from his post as Delhi Bharatiya Janata Party president on Sunday following the party's defeat in the Municipal Corporation of Delhi elections. (ANI)

The party’s vote share picked up from 36.08% in 2017 to 39.08% this year, even as the party won just 104 of Delhi’s 250 municipal wards, compared to the AAP’s 134. The increased vote share didn’t translate to victory because the party lost some of its middle-class strongholds, said local BJP leaders, even as they pointed to wafer-thin losses in some wards.

BJP, which governed the municipal corporation for 15 years, lost at least 24 seats by less than 1,000 votes, including 10 wards where the difference was less than 500 votes, including Adarsh Nagar, Moti Nagar, Sarup Nagar, Rohini-B, Rohini-A, Daryaganj, Madanpur Khadar East. Further, the party lost the Chittaranjan Park and Nand Nagri wards by less than 100 votes.

“Despite an increase in vote share, we lost wards like East Patel Nagar, Madipur, Rohini-A, Munirka, Ramesh Nagar, Rohtas Nagar, Adarsh Nagar, Moti Nagar by less than 1,000 votes. This shows that there was a problem with our candidate selection and that people voted for the BJP, not the party nominee, in these areas. In municipal elections, candidates matter a lot as the voter base is very small. Some of the wards we lost were BJP strongholds,” said a senior BJP functionary.

However, BJP national vice-president and Delhi co-incharge Baijayant Panda said that the party picked its nominees after a detailed deliberative process.

“The candidates were selected after an extensive consultative process with party workers at the mandal and district levels, MLAs and MPs, former state unit presidents and other senior leaders. We also conducted extensive surveys to assess the viability of candidates. After the candidate list was announced, we held an opinion poll of our workers and we got near-unanimous feedback that our selection was correct. Of the hundreds of thousands of party workers, only a few were unhappy... This indicates that our process was correct,” said Panda.

He argued that the increased vote share means the BJP is “gaining popularity”, though he acknowledged why this did not result in a larger number of seats.

Panda also dismissed the role of anti-incumbency, despite the BJP’s three-term control of the civic body.

“Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership, anti-incumbency has been shattered all over the country. The AAP has deliberately tried to foster anti-incumbency by choking MCD by not releasing ₹42,000 crore so that the civic body couldn’t perform. Despite this, the municipal corporations did a lot of work….else the vote share won’t have gone up. We are gaining in popularity,” he said.

In fact, as the BJP gears up for Lok Sabha elections in 2024 and assembly elections in 2025, senior leaders said the municipal election results are evidence that the AAP’s image of an “honest party” has been “dented with the allegations of corruption”.

Senior Delhi BJP leader Ashish Sood, who was in-charge of municipal elections, said, “Their ministers couldn’t ensure victory in their constituencies. AAP lost all the wards in the constituencies of their ministers such as Jain and Kailash Gahlot. In deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia and minister Gopal Rai’s constituencies, they won just one ward each.”

AAP spokespersons did not respond to requests seeking comment on the allegations.