A major factor behind Bharatiya Janata Party’s win in the Delhi Assembiy elections has been the gains it has made among the Scheduled Caste or Dalit voters for whom 12 of Delhis 70 Assembly constituencies are also reserved.
While in the last two Assembly elections, Aam Aadmi Party had won all these 12 seats, showing its immense popularity among the SC and backward caste and economically backward voters, the BJP this time managed to make inroads into this traditional vote base of AAP and won four seats.
What appears to have worked for the BJP in these constituencies, which mostly comprise of jhuggi jhopri clusters, and unauthorised and resettlement colonies, have been its promises of continuing with the freebies offered by the AAP government and offering more by way of scholarships and grants on coming to power — which it had called Modi’s guarantees.
When the AAP was formed out of the India Against Corruption movement in 2013, it had made a big impact in the first election it fought due to the support it received in these SC constituencies. In 2013, AAP had won 9 of the 12 seats with BJP getting 2 and Congress 1. Thereafter in the 2015 and 2020 elections, AAP’s popularity grew in these areas and it won all the 12 seats.
This time the BJP has wrested a third of them. It has done so by taking some of the former Congress leaders under its wings. These include former Delhi minister Raj Kumar Chauhan who won from Mangolpuri by defeating Dharam Rakshak of AAP. The seat was won by Rakhi Birla of AAP in the last two polls but she left it and fought from Madipur to ward off anti-incumbency but lost to Kailash Gangwal of BJP.
The other two seats which the BJP won are Bawana where Ravinder Indraj Singh defeated Jai Bhagwan Upkar of AAP; and Trilokpuri, where its candidate Ravi Kant, defeated Anjana Parcha of AAP by a narrow margin of 392 votes.
The AAP was victorious in the remaining SC reserved seats of Karol Bagh, Patel Nagar, Deoli, Ambedkar Nagar, Trilok Puri, Seemapuri, Kondli and Gokalpur.
