New Delhi, Feb 8 (IANS) The BJP has scored well in Sikh-dominated seats in the Delhi Assembly elections with wins in three out of four constituencies with more than 10 per cent of voters from the community.
The BJP also gained, hartly, due to the derogatory verbal attacks of AAP leaders during the campaign on tall Sikh leader and Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri, accusing him of settling Rohingyas in the city.
The Assembly results declared on Saturday showed that among the Sikh-dominated seats, the BJP managed to win Rajouri Garden, Vikaspuri and Moti Nagar while it failed to wrest Tilak Nagar from the AAP.
The Sikhs in Delhi account for 5 per cent of the total two crore population and are present in almost all constituencies with their numbers varying from 5,000 to 55,000 in different seats.
Another factor that consolidated Sikh votes for the BJP was the Central government’s recent decision to relax norms for offering jobs to members of families which suffered losses in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.
In January, Lieutenant Governor V.K. Saxena had approved full relaxation in required educational qualification and age, up to 55 years, for 88 applications for government employment from kin of the victims of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.
In the current Assembly elections, BJP’s Manjinder Singh Sira won the Rajouri Garden seat, beating AAP’s Dhanwati Chandela by 18,190 votes. In 2020, Chandela had defeated BJP’s Ramesh Khanna by 22,972 votes. Around 30 per cent of voters in the seat are Sikhs.
The AAP retained the Tilak Nagar seat as Jarnail Singh beat BJP’s Shveta Saini by 11,658 votes. In the 2020 Assembly elections, Jarnail Singh had beaten BJP’s Rajiv Babbar by 28,029 votes. A third of the voters in the constituency are Sikhs.
The BJP can take comfort in the fact that its defeat margin has come down by half in the seat, indicating a favourable swing among the Sikh voters in the constituency.
In Moti Nagar, Harish Khurana, son of former chief minister Madan Lal Khurana, of the BJP emerged victorious by beating Shiv Charan Goel of the AAP by 11,657 votes.
Vikaspuri, Delhi’s largest constituency whose 13 per cent of voters are Sikhs, was also won by Pankaj Kumar Singh of the BJP beat Mahinder Yadav of AAP by 6,439 votes.
A Delhi BJP leader said the AAP leader’s allegations against Puri that he settled Rohingyas in Delhi seem to have backfired on them. “They attacked a senior Sikh leader who has devoted his life to the country,” he said.
The BJP’s campaign also revolved around exposing the AAP’s failed promise of paying Rs 1,000 per month to women in Punjab. This line of attack by the BJP did the trick for it in Sikh-dominated constituencies as voters here have relatives in Punjab with whom they could check the truth about the AAP’s development model and failures in that state.
–IANS
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