MP Parvesh Verma’s hate speeches backfire, BJP set to lose all 10 seats in his constituency

BJP had fielded prominent candidates Tajinder Bagga, Rajiv Babbar and Ashish Sood from seats in MP Parvesh Verma's West Delhi Lok Sabha constituency.

File photo of West Delhi BJP MP Parvesh Verma | ANI

New Delhi: BJP MP Parvesh Verma, who was booked twice in a week’s time by the Election Commission for his “hate speeches”, has ended up failing his party, with the BJP trailing in all the ten seats under his West Delhi parliamentary constituency.

The 10 assembly seats are Madipur, Rajouri Garden, Hari Nagar, Tilak Nagar, Janakpuri, Vikaspuri, Uttam Nagar, Dwarka, Matiala and Najafgarh.

BJP had fielded some of its prominent faces, including Tajinder Bagga (Hari Nagar), Rajiv Babbar (Tilak Nagar) and Ashish Sood (Janakpuri), among others, from West Delhi seats.

At 2.40 pm, Babbar was trailing by 19,290 votes, Bagga by 7,831 votes and Sood by 14,058 votes, according to the EC website.

Son of former Delhi chief minister Sahib Singh Verma, the BJP MP called protesters at Shaheen Bagh “rapists and murderers”, which was criticised severely by politicians and people.

Despite being censured by the Election Commission, he remained unapologetic, and invoked Shaheen Bagh in his Twitter post on the voting day too.

“If Shaheen Bagh people can stand in long queues and urge people to vote for AAP, then Delhiites you too should come out of your houses and vote for a nationalistic party,” he tweeted at 2.32 pm Saturday.

Verma spent a considerable part of his time campaigning in the West Delhi constituency. He inaugurated BJP’s Hari Nagar candidate Tajinder Bagga’s election office. It is in his Parliamentary constituency that Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed one of his two rallies.

The 1,700 unauthorised colonies that were approved by the Modi government was one of the issues Verma highlighted — because a large chunk of these colonies fall under the West Delhi constituency, especially in assembly segments like Dwarka and Uttam Nagar.

On 28 January, Verma stoked a controversy when he drew a parallel between Kashmiri militants and Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) protesters at Shaheen Bagh.

“Lakhs of people gather there (Shaheen Bagh) and this fire can anytime reach households of Delhi,” he said. “People of Delhi need to think about it and decide. These people will enter your house, will abduct your sisters and mothers, rape them, kill them, that’s why today is the moment.”

In the run-up to the assembly elections, Verma had promised to demolish mosques that were built on government land in his constituency if the BJP came to power in Delhi.