New Delhi: A breakdown of Delhi election results show the Congress secured more votes than the Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP’s) margin of defeat in 13 seats, even relegating AAP to the third place in one, contributing to the losses of several heavyweights, including former chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, former deputy CM Manish Sisodia, and outgoing Health Minister Saurabh Bharadwaj, among others.
The results have sparked a fresh churn within the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) with non-Congress parties, including the Samajwadi Party, Trinamool Congress, and the Left, criticising the Congress’s strategy of targeting AAP in what was a make-or-break battle for Kejriwal.
“The Congress spoke the language of the BJP during the elections. It sent out a wrong message to the voters. The Congress even targeted SP leaders for campaigning for AAP,” said SP spokesperson Fakhrul Hasan Chaand in an interview with ThePrint. “Congress had no interest in defeating the BJP but just wanted to recover lost ground in Delhi.”
Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, who had previously questioned the relevance of the INDIA bloc due to the lack of seat-sharing arrangements between allies in state polls, suggested that the Delhi results validated his concerns. “Aur lado aapas mein!!!” (Keep fighting among each other), he said in a post on X.
Aur lado aapas mein!!! pic.twitter.com/8Yu9WK4k0c
— Omar Abdullah (@OmarAbdullah) February 8, 2025
Contributed to AAP losses on SC seats
In the New Delhi constituency, Kejriwal lost to BJP’s Parvesh Verma by 4,089 votes. Congress candidate Sandeep Dikshit, son of three-time Congress CM, the late Sheila Dikshit, secured 4,568 votes in a seat where Kejriwal had defeated his mother in the 2013 assembly polls that marked the AAP’s arrival on Delhi’s political stage.
At Jangpura, Sisodia lost by 675 votes to BJP’s Tarvinder Singh Marwah, while Congress’s Farhad Suri secured 7,350 votes. In Greater Kailash, another constituency in South Delhi, AAP’s Saurabh Bharadwaj lost to BJP’s Shikha Rai by 3,188 votes, with Congress candidate Garvit Singhvi securing 6,711 votes.
A Delhi Congress leader told ThePrint that while the Congress’s vote share rose only marginally—from 4.26 percent in 2020 to 6.35 percent this time—there was a noticeable shift of the middle classes, who overwhelmingly vote for the BJP, towards the Congress.
“This explains the votes we polled in seats such as New Delhi, Greater Kailash, Malviya Nagar, Jangpura, and Rajinder Nagar,” the leader said.
Congress also contributed to AAP’s losses in seats reserved for Scheduled Castes (SC), such as Trilokpuri and Seemapuri.
Udit Raj, a prominent SC face of Congress, highlighted that the party’s inability to win over Delhi’s Dalits and Muslims should be a concern. “The Muslims had no trust that we were in a position to defeat the BJP. The AAP’s fearmongering that voting for Congress would result in the BJP’s victory added to that worry,” Raj said.
“For the Dalit votes, however, Congress simply did not fight adequately enough. Congress workers on the ground failed to take Rahul Gandhi’s pitch of social justice to them.”
Nevertheless, Raj believes the defeat of AAP offers Congress an opportunity to revive its organisation in Delhi. “At least, the party has shaken off its dilemma on how to approach AAP. The Delhi unit and high command finally agreed that Congress cannot afford to treat AAP with kid gloves if it wants to reclaim its glory days in Delhi,” said another Delhi Congress leader.
Jairam Ramesh, the Congress’s general secretary (communications), also showed confidence that the party’s rise will only rise moving forward.
“The 2025 Delhi Vidhan Sabha election results reflect nothing more than a referendum on Arvind Kejriwal and the Aam Aadmi Party…This shows that, rather than being vindication of the policies of the PM, this vote is a rejection of Arvind Kejriwal’s politics of deceit, deception, and vastly exaggerated claims of achievement,” he said.
The 2025 Delhi Vidhan Sabha election results reflect nothing more than a referendum on Arvind Kejriwal and the Aam Aadmi Party. After all, at the height of the PM’s popularity in 2015 and 2020, AAP had won decisively in Delhi. This shows that, rather than being vindication of the…
— Jairam Ramesh (@Jairam_Ramesh) February 8, 2025
He said the Congress was expecting to do better. However, it increased its vote share and “it may not be in the Assembly, but, it is definitely a presence in Delhi”.
“There will be a Congress Govt once again in Delhi in 2030,” he said.
Also Read: Kejriwal, Sisodia to Saurabh Bharadwaj, AAP giants have fallen. A look at party’s rise & fall in Capital
Congress vs AAP
During the campaign, Congress’s high command initially intervened to get Delhi unit leaders to tone down their offensive against AAP. However, by the end, senior leaders Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra launched an aggressive campaign against Kejriwal, equating him with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Rahul even referred to corruption cases against Kejriwal, calling him and Sisodia the “architects” of the “liquor scam” and accusing the AAP supremo of “building a sheesh mahal for himself”.
Despite Congress stepping up its attacks on AAP, its INDIA bloc allies—such as SP, TMC, NCP(SP), and Shiv Sena (UBT)—threw their weight behind the party.
On Saturday, even the Left seemed to put Congress on the spot. CPI General Secretary D. Raja, in a statement, called the result in Delhi “a wake-up call for the constituents of the INDIA bloc, particularly the Indian National Congress—the largest party in the coalition—and other dominant regional parties”.
“The path forward requires honest, self-critical introspection to strengthen the unity necessary for the defense of our Constitution and pro-people policies. Unity must be both ideological and practical to ensure a better, inclusive future for India. Let this result be a call for reflection and action,” Raja said in a post on X.
However, Congress dismissed these criticisms. Amitabh Dubey, who works with the party’s research cell, said on X, “Those pointing fingers at Congress should remember who arrogantly decided to break the INDIA alliance and fight alone first.”
He was making a reference to Kejriwal’s statement on 11 December 2024 that “there is no possibility of any alliance with Congress” in Delhi.
Congress leader Pawan Khera also echoed a similar view, saying “so-called liberals” don’t “give these lectures on opposition unity to AAP when the party went to Goa, Gujarat, Haryana etc to fight elections and weaken anti-communal, secular vote.”
“Delhi election result is a rejection of the Trojan horse that attempted to damage the liberal cause across the country. The majority of liberals are rightly cheering the fall of the facade so that the real champion of liberal values—the Indian National Congress—can emerge stronger to take the BJP on and defeat it,” Khera wrote on X.
(Edited by Sanya Mathur)
Also Read: Delhi polls: AAP wins more SC-reserved seats than BJP in election marked by Ambedkar row
