New Delhi: Delhi Chief Minister and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Atishi won by a slim margin of 3,000 votes against closest rival, BJP’s Ramesh Bidhuri, in the Kalkaji assembly seat.
The third key contender in the fray is Congress’s women’s wing chief Alka Lamba, who spent nearly five years with the AAP before returning to the Congress in 2019. She is way behind Atishi.
Atishi, 43, who has been associated with the AAP since its launch, became an adviser to senior party leader Manish Sisodia in 2015.
In 2019, she unsuccessfully contested the Lok Sabha polls against BJP’s Gautam Gambhir from East Delhi constituency. In 2020, the party fielded her from Kalkaji constituency where she defeated BJP’s Dharambir Singh by over 11,000 votes.
After that, she rose from being just an MLA to the busiest minister in Delhi, holding several important portfolios. Last year, she became CM in the last leg of the seventh Delhi legislative assembly after Arvind Kejriwal resigned from the post.
The Kalkaji constituency is an interesting mix of upmarket residential areas, middle-class pockets, unauthorised colonies and slums. While pockets such as Maharani Bagh and New Friends Colony have affluent sections, those like Govindpuri, Kalkaji and Tughlakabad have a large lower middle-class population.
During her poll campaign, Atishi focussed on her contribution to the field of education, Delhi’s mohalla clinics and other AAP initiatives. On the other hand, both Bidhuri and Lamba kept their campaign focused on local issues, including dirty water, overflowing nullahs, wires hanging overhead, littered roads and parking issues.
Kalkaji has 1.95 lakh voters, according to the Election Commission. Punjabis and Dalits are significant in numbers in this segment.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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