New Delhi: The Aam Aadmi Party, born out of an anti-corruption movement that had swept urban India over a decade ago, is poised to lose power in Delhi after 10 years in office, as Bharatiya Janata Party nears its first capture of the national capital in 27 years.
While counting is still underway, the BJP is inching towards securing a simple majority in the 70-member Delhi assembly, a Union Territory with special status, edging out the AAP, which has dominated the city’s political landscape since 2015.
The polling took place on 5 February.
In 2013, AAP made its dramatic entry into the nation’s political firmament, winning 28 seats in the assembly polls and bringing an end to the tenure of three-term Congress chief minister Sheila Dikshit, who was credited with revitalising Delhi through rapid infrastructure development.
Over the next decade, it continued to grow from strength to strength. Saturday’s verdict, however, signals that the capital is set to turn a new page, giving the BJP the opportunity to govern for the first time in this millennium—one that has witnessed the city’s growth, while also giving it the dubious distinction of the world’s pollution capital.
According to Election Commission data at 1.40 pm, the BJP has won five seats against AAP’s six, though the former is leading in 45 and the latter in 21. The Congress, which has struggled to stay afloat in the city ever since it lost power in 2013, has registered a slight jump in its vote share, but is set to draw a blank in terms of seats.
The BJP has secured a vote share of 46.24 percent, compared to the AAP’s 43.52 percent. In the 2020 Delhi assembly elections, the AAP won 62 seats with 53.37 percent of the votes, while the BJP managed to win eight seats with a vote share of 38.51 percent. In 2015, AAP won 67 seats and 54.3 percent votes, while BJP’s tally was reduced to three and vote share to 32.2 percent.
In the prestigious New Delhi constituency, Kejriwal and BJP’s Parvesh Verma were locked in a tight contest, which Kejriwal looks set to lose. Manish Sisodia has also conceded defeat in the Jangpura seat against BJP’s Tarvinder Singh Marwah.
In Kalkaji, however, Chief Minister Atishi is inching towards a win against BJP’s Ramesh Bidhuri.
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Cracks in AAP’s stronghold
Overall, the BJP has taken a decisive lead over the AAP, which was banking on support from lower-income households to retain power. As the election results began unfolding, AAP leaders privately acknowledged that replicating their commanding performances from 2015 and 2020 was a formidable challenge.
Yet, they were hopeful of gaining a simple majority. The results show that the party could not gauge the scale of the simmering resentment on the ground against its confrontational style of governance, marked by constant run-ins with the Centre and its nominated Lieutenant Governor in the capital.
It also shows that the AAP could not really recover from the shock of its entire top leadership getting arrested on charges of corruption in drafting and implementation of the excise policy—a showpiece project of the Kejriwal government aimed at reforming Delhi’s liquor trade.
At the time of their respective arrests, Kejriwal was serving as chief minister and Manish Sisodia as deputy chief minister. Sanjay Singh, the party’s Rajya Sabha MP, was also arrested, as was Satyendar Jain, who was then serving as the Public Works Department and health minister, though in a separate case.
With their arrests, the AAP government was left paralysed. Kejriwal, who was arrested in March 2024, continued to serve as the chief minister from jail, but the restrictions imposed on him as an undertrial made it virtually impossible for him to discharge his duties. After walking out on bail in September last year, he quit as chief minister, elevating Atishi to the post.
The AAP then sought to address mounting grievances about the city’s state of disrepair by fixing its roads. However, on other fronts, it made limited progress, leading to escalating anger among the vocal middle class over issues like toxic air, a polluted Yamuna and contaminated drinking water.
While the final results are still being tallied, the BJP is making significant gains in outer Delhi regions bordering Haryana, including Najafgarh, Narela, Bawana, Chhatarpur and Bijwasan. The AAP is largely retaining seats reserved for Scheduled Castes and those with significant Muslim populations, indicating that the Congress, despite its efforts, has not made inroads into the AAP’s core support base.
BJP’s strategy
For the AAP, this was a make-or-break election. A defeat, of course, may cause corruption cases against its leaders to gain momentum. Additionally, in its 13 years of existence, the party has rarely been out of power in Delhi, where it emerged from the cradle of the India Against Corruption Movement that shook the foundations of the Congress-led UPA government.
On its part, in contrast to its highly polarising campaign in the 2020 Delhi assembly elections, where it leveraged the anti-CAA protests to consolidate Hindu votes, the BJP adopted a less divisive approach in the 2025 elections.
It chose to capitalise on the anti-incumbency sentiment against the AAP by highlighting its failure to clean the Yamuna, improve the city’s poor road infrastructure and address an inefficient garbage collection system—issues that resonated with the middle and upper-middle classes, demographic groups not swayed by the AAP’s populist schemes.
In fact, the data suggests that the shift within the middle class—which had previously supported Kejriwal in Delhi while still favouring Narendra Modi at the national level—may have been responsible for the cracks in the AAP’s stronghold in Delhi. After all, the middle class too contributed in helping the AAP gain overwhelming mandates in 2015 and 2020.
According to the Delhi election-eve survey in 2020 and post-poll survey in 2015 by Lokniti-CSDS, the AAP led the BJP not just among the poor and the lower middle class but also the middle class. The AAP had actually improved its vote share among the middle class between 2015 and 2020, Lokniti-CSDS data shows.
The BJP was also anticipating a surge in middle class support for it after the announcement on the hike in income tax rebates in the Union Budget. According to a People Research on India’s Consumer Economy (PRICE) study released in 2023, Delhi’s middle class accounts for 67 percent of its population—more than double the national average.
Also, the BJP, unlike in 2020, did not run down the Kejriwal government’s populist schemes in its campaign this time. Instead, the party leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, took care to assure people that the party, in the event of its victory, will not scrap the AAP government’s popular schemes, such as free power, water and bus rides for women.
The BJP also consistently highlighted the alleged liquor policy scam and the controversy over the lavish renovation of the chief minister’s residence, stripping Kejriwal of the moral halo that could be anything but corrupt.
The BJP, in fact, tried to outdo the AAP in promising freebies. For instance, while the AAP had promised a monthly cash handout of Rs 2,100 for women, the BJP hiked the amount to Rs 2,500 in its manifesto. In the end, the BJP’s strategy of taking the sheen off the AAP’s welfare model seems to have paid off.
(Edited by Mannat Chugh)
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