Delhi polls: Sisodia’s prison term hurt AAP, handed Patparganj to BJP
BJP's Ravinder Singh Negi won Patparganj, ending AAP's decade-long hold, defeating Avadh Ojha by 28,072 votes amid local discontent and demographic shifts.
Patparganj, a constituency that gave AAP’s former deputy chief minister and supremo Arvind Kejriwal’s right-hand man, Manish Sisodia, three consecutive terms but showed signs of shifting loyalties completed its transformation on Saturday. BJP’s Ravinder Singh Negi defeated the party’s Avadh Ojha by 28,072 votes, marking a decisive end to AAP’s decade-long hold on this east Delhi seat.
In 2020, Sisodia scraped through with just 3,207 votes against the same opponent. On December 9, as the party released its second list of candidates and replaced the Sisodia with civil services coach-turned-politician Ojha, it banked on the latter’s Purvanchali background in an attempt to shore up support in a constituency where demographics play a decisive role.
Saturday’s results show that strategy failed to stem the slide.
According to Election Commission data, Negi secured 74,060 votes (53.41% of the total 138,652 votes polled), while Ojha managed 45,988 votes (33.17%). This represents a dramatic strengthening of BJP’s performance since 2020, when Negi had secured 66,956 votes (47.07%) against Sisodia’s 70,163 (49.33%).
The constituency’s complex demography was a crucial determinant. Of Patparganj’s 226,310 voters - 122,194 men, 104,100 women, and 16 third-gender electors - Purvanchali and Uttarakhandi voters make up 18-20%, concentrated in Mandawali, East Vinod Nagar, and West Vinod Nagar. Muslim voters, primarily in Mandawali Fazalpur, account for 8-9%.
The seat’s geography mirrors Delhi’s stark economic divides. Areas with orderly apartment blocks like Mayur Vihar phases 1 and 2 and IP Extension stand in sharp contrast to urban villages, slums, and lower-middle-class settlements such as Mandawali, Acharya Niketan, Vinod Nagar, Khichripur, Shashi Garden, and Patparganj village. The Delhi-Meerut Expressway and National Highway-9 cut through these neighbourhoods, deepening the economic and infrastructural divide.
Local activist Arun Kumar Singh from IP Extension said voters’ sentiment was dominated by immediate concerns: “Voters were annoyed because of the dirty tap water supply at their homes and the open sewers that overflowed during monsoon and the dirty water inundated houses built in areas like Mandawali and West Vinod Nagar.”
Singh added that Negi’s campaign style proved decisive. Ojha’s “outsider image” contrasted sharply with Negi’s credentials as a local leader and former ward councillor. The BJP candidate’s “hardline Hindutva image and his aggressive anti-Muslim verbal attacks”, Singh said, succeeded in polarising Hindu voters.
AAP also struggled with the legacy of corruption allegations. Sisodia’s two-year absence from the constituency while in prison over the alleged excise policy scam had already damaged the party’s standing. The BJP capitalised on this, portraying AAP leaders as “only temporarily available” on bail.
The defeat in Patparganj mirrored AAP’s broader collapse in Delhi, a city where it held upwards of 60 of 70 seats in the last two assemblies. Even Sisodia, contesting from Jangpura, lost by a razor-thin margin of 675 votes.
Before AAP’s decade-long dominance beginning in 2013, Patparganj had been a Congress stronghold, with the party winning successive elections in 1998, 2003, and 2008.
