New Delhi: Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Manish Sisodia lost to BJP’s Tarvinder Singh Marwah in a close fight by 675 votes in Jangpura, where the former Delhi deputy chief minister was shifted from Patparganj.
Sisodia and Marwah got 38,184 and 38,859 votes, respectively.
The fortunes of the two rival candidates see-sawed in the constituency before Sisodia conceded defeat to Marwah. “Party workers fought well; we all did hard work. People have supported us as well. But, I lost by 600 votes. I congratulate the candidate who won. I hope he will work for the constituency,” Sisodia told the media Saturday afternoon.
The AAP’s strategy of moving out Sisodia to Jangpura, which was with the AAP, nearly paid off as seen in the slim win margin of the BJP candidate. The Congress’s Farhad Suri, who came a distant third with 7,350 votes, played spoiler for the AAP’s high-profile candidate.
A well-known face in Jangpura, Marwah had won thrice from Jangpura in 1998, 2003, and 2008. The seat, however, was with the AAP.
Before he was move to Jangpura, Sisosdia was first elected from East Delhi’s Patparganj in 2013. He had defeated BJP’s Nakul Bhardwaj. In 2015, Sisodia defeated the BJP’s Vinod Kumar Binny and in 2020, he edged past BJP’s Ravinder Singh Negi by only 3,207 votes.
The narrow margin of victory back then, according to sources in the AAP, was a major reason behind Sisodia’s shift to Jangpura. The AAP had put its bet on the Dalit and Muslim pockets in areas such as Nehru Nagar, Sunlight Colony, Nizamuddin Basti.
In Jangpura, Sisodia faced the charge of ”outsider” from Marwah, who has won thrice from the constituency in the past. In his campaign, the BJP leader focused to make a narrative of ‘local versus outsider’ whereas Sisodia harped on AAP’s promises and freebies.
There are almost 1.48 lakh voters in this seat, with Sikhs and Muslims constituting above 20 percent. Dalits form above 15 percent of the electorate in this seat.
During the election campaign, AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal announced Sisodia would assume the role of deputy chief minister again if the party wins the polls in Delhi. In Jangpura, Sisodia promised transformative governance if elected. “If I win from Jangpura, every brother and sister here will become Deputy CM. No one will dare to stop the work of the people here.”
The 53-year-old leader, who earlier served as Arvind Kejriwal’s deputy, was arrested in March 2023 in connection with the Delhi liquor excise policy case. Sisodia spent 17 months in jail before being granted bail by the Supreme Court in August last year.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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