Delhi Election 2020: AAP improves victory margin in 17 seats

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) may have registered a thumping victory in the latest round of Delhi Assembly elections but it could improve its victory margin in only 17 of its 61 sitting seats, which it retained this time.

The Arvind Kejriwal-led party which has a total tally of 62, wrested one seat from BJP but lost six of its sitting seats to its principal opponent.

Neither Chief Minister and AAP supremo Kejriwal nor Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia could improve their margins with the latter facing anxious moments in the first 10 of the 15 rounds of counting.

However, the BJP which retained two of its three sitting seats improved their tally in both the seats. Leader of Opposition Vijender Gupta increased his victory margin from 5,367 votes in 2015 to 12,648 in Rohini while OP Sharma's margin rose from 10,158 to 16,457 in Vishwas Nagar.

Kejriwal settled with a margin of 21,697 this time compared to 31,583 in 2015 polls while Sisodia scraped through with 3,207 votes as against 28,791 last time.

The decrease in margins of AAP winners was over 10,000 in at least a dozen seats while at least two seats had a reduction of victory margin of over 35,000 votes. In around ten seats, the victory margin saw a dip of over 20,000 compared to the 2015 figures.

One of the biggest jumps in victory margins for the AAP was in Matia Mahal where its candidate Shoib Iqbal, a local leader with a huge following who joined the party ahead of elections, increased the margin from 26,096 to 50,241.

While BJP lost its sitting seat Mustafabad to AAP by a margin of 20,704, it managed to wrest Badarpur, Gandhinagar, Ghonda, Karawal Nagar, Laxmi Nagar and Rohtas Nagar from AAP. In Laxmi Nagar, the margin was as low as 880, the second-lowest.

The highest victory margin was recorded in Burari seat where AAP's Sanjeev Jha improved his margin from 67,950 to 88158 votes. The lowest victory margin was that of B S Joon, a lawyer, who won by a margin of 753 votes, where AAP last time won by 16,936.

The second-highest margin was in Okhla where Amanatullah Khan won by 71827 votes improving his 2015 figure of 64,532. There were four AAP winners who secured a margin of over 50,000 votes.