Mamata Banerjee congratulates Arvind Kejriwal, AAP over Bawana bypoll win

Kejriwal’s AAP had won the Bawana general elections in 2015, bagging 1,09,259 votes. The central leadership had appointed West Delhi MP Parvesh Verma as bypoll incharge, which had raised eyebrows in a section of the party. And this is exactly what has happened in the by-poll. “This was a negative point against AAP, but it damaged us”, said BJP MLA Vijender Gupta, who played an important role in Prakash’s return into the party.

In Andhra Predesh’s Nandyal Assembly seat, TDP candidate B Brahmananda Reddy defeated YSRCP rival S Mohan Reddy by more than 27000 votes.

The BJP’s defeat in Bawana just four months after its massive victory in MCD elections and one-sided win in Rajouri Garden bypolls is nearly like a U-turn by voters in Delhi.

“Congrats to all the dedicated volunteers of AAP for Bawana ByPoll win and all the best to CYSS Raj Gopal Rai you deserves a bow”, Kumar tweeted.

The AAP candidate received 45.39 percent of the total votes cast, while the BJP and Congress candidates got 27.16 and 24.19 percent, respectively.

“Earlier, there was a complete disconnect with the people here”. The victory of AAP this year shows that it is a victory of the organisation and not of the candidate. It is noteworthy that AAP has been stressing on use of VVPAT for long claiming that the BJP has been hacking into EVMs to win elections.

But, the party lost its leading trend and came to second, and then third place in the “battle of prestige” when the final results were announced. “From nine per cent votes that we polled in February 2015 assembly elections, we managed to win 25 per cent votes”.

He said that “too much should not be read into this mandate” as it was just one Assembly by-poll and the party’s real test would be to deal with ground-level problems like the dengue and chikungunya menace in the city.

The Kejriwal-led party altered its game plan, as a part of which the CM muted himself, refraining from targeting political rivals, including PM Narendra Modi, and instead, focussing on the achievements of his own Government during the campaign. A meeting was held on Monday evening at the state BJP office. Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal has made big promises for development of rural areas.

“They tried to buy many of our MLAs, contacted many, but only one turned out to be a traitor”. Parrikar and his health minister, backed by the full-throttled power of the state, were pitted against two rank outsiders.