Rajinder Nagar by-election result today

Office of the chief electoral officer said the postal ballots, numbering about 229, will be counted first.

The fates of 14 candidates in the fray for the Rajinder Nagar assembly by-elections will be decided on Sunday when over 72,000 votes, polled on Thursday, will be counted at the Industrial Training Institute in Pusa, New Delhi, in the presence of election officials and representatives of candidates.

People in queue to cast their votes for the Rajinder Nagar bypoll election, show their identity cards inside a polling station at Dasghara in New Delhi. (HT Photo)

Office of the chief electoral officer said the postal ballots, numbering about 229, will be counted first. On Thursday, 43.75% of 164,698 eligible electors voted in the by-election that came about as a result of incumbent MLA, Raghav Chadha of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), resigning on March 24; he later got elected to the Rajya Sabha from Punjab, where his power had come to power with a thumping majority.

The key contenders for the seat are AAP’s Durgesh Pathak and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s Rajesh Bhatia. From the Congress, former councillor Prem Lata is contesting the election. In 2020, Chadha won the seat after defeating his nearest rival, RP Singh of the BJP, by a margin of over 20,000 votes.

On Saturday, Pathak exuded confidence of a victory. “AAP is going to win the seat by a huge margin. During the election, we got support from all sections of people who wanted to take forward the development work being done under the leadership of chief minister Arvind Kejriwal,” he said.

Bhatia, too, was confident of winning the seat. “We won the hearts of the voters and we will win the by-election as well. I want to thank all voters who turned up to cast their vote. Their votes will play a big role in the overall development of the constituency and in solving the problems of the area,” he said.

Delhi Congress vice-president Abhishek Dutt said Congress candidate Prem Lata had worked hard and won the confidence of the people. “We hope that the result will be in favour of the Congress,” said Dutt.

Whatever be the outcome on Sunday, it will not affect the power equation within the Delhi assembly where the AAP holds a brute majority with 62 of the total 70 seats; but it will serve as a barometer to measure the political shifts, if any, in the national capital. Political observers believe that since the polls have come on the heels of the unification of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), the result may help gauge the public mood. The by-election is also the first election to be held after the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak in 2020.

For AAP, the election will be a sort of referendum on the first 2.5 years of the Kejriwal 2.0 government, while for the BJP, a positive result could boost its claims that the unification of the MCD was a step in the right direction. A victory will lead to an increase in the BJP’s presence in the Delhi assembly, where it currently has eight MLAs.

A positive result for Congress will give the party a much needed toehold in the Delhi assembly, where it currently has no seat. The party has not been able to send a legislator to the House since the 2015 assembly elections.

The turnout in the by-election was also low at 43.75%, election officials said. In comparison, 58.3% had turned up to vote in the 2020 assembly election. Officials attributed the lower turnout to polls being held on a Thursday (a weekday) and a general lack of enthusiasm towards the by-election.

Among the issues that dominated the minds of voters were the ongoing water crisis, choked sewer lines, poor sanitation services, bad condition of roads and parking issues.