Delhi election | I-T cut effect? BJP makes gains in seats with large number of govt servants
8th Pay Commission may be another factor in its favour; party also does well in border seats with large number of Jat voters, and SC constituencies
The BJP looks poised to make history, returning to Delhi to form the government after 27 years. At a vote share of 46.9 per cent, the party has managed to gain at least 6 percentage points over 2020, when it got 40.7 per cent of the votes.
The win comes after long gap that started in 1998, when the BJP lost the Assembly polls to the Congress.
In a major setback to the AAP, the BJP has made inroads in Delhi's Scheduled Caste reserved constituencies. It is leading in at least four (Bawana, Gokalpur, Mangolpuri, and Madipur) of the 12 SC constituencies considered AAP bastions since the 2015 Assembly elections.
I-T cut and Pay Commission
The BJP also appears to have done well in constituencies with a large number of government servants, such as New Delhi, RK Puram and Delhi Cantt. It seems that the Union Budget to give an income-tax cut to people earning below Rs12 lakh a year, and the announcement of the 8th Pay Commission, have worked for the BJP in these constituencies.
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The impact of the BJP’s electoral performance can be understood from the fact that AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal was trailing at one point in the New Delhi constituency against Parvesh Verma of BJP. Another prominent face of AAP, sitting Chief Minister Atishi, was trailing in the Kalkaji constituency against Ramesh Bidhuri of BJP.
While the counting of votes is still on, some of the ministers of the AAP government, such as Satyendra Jain and Saurabh Bharadwaj, were also trailing against their BJP rivals.
Muslim dominated seats
Apart from the SC constituencies, the BJP is leading in the Muslim dominated seat of Okhla, again a first.
The emphatic BJP might was also visible in the seats of Delhi that share borders with Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. Out of the 23 constituencies in the border areas where there is a considerable population of Jat and Gurjar communities, the BJP was leading in at least 18 seats.
This is possibly because of Kailash Gehlot, a former AAP minister who jumped ship to the BJP just before the election. Gehlot was the most prominent Jat leader of AAP and was responsible for bringing Jat voters to the party the previous time.
Today, he was leading from the Bijwasan constituency. The BJP was also leading from Najafgarh, original constituency of Gehlot.
