NEW DELHI: The Election Commission announced the Delhi Assembly elections on Tuesday night and the last party ruling the national capital, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is back again to serve its second term. The party swept Delhi polls with 62 seats out of 70, leaving only 8 seats for the Bhartiya Janta Party.
The opposition BJP got eight seats -- up from three in 2015, while the Congress remained at zero.
The victory of the AAP ensured a hat-trick for its national convener Arvind Kejriwal in the office of Delhi Chief Minister. All the Kejriwal government Minister retained their seats with a decent margin, though Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia saw a see-saw battle before he was declared winner from his Patparganj seat in east Delhi.
Kejriwal is the second person after Congress leader Sheila Dikshit to become the Chief Minister of the city for the third time.
The AAP had won 67 of the 70 Assembly seats in 2015, barring Rohini, Vishwas Nagar and Mustafabad which had gone to the BJP's kitty.
This time, the BJP lost Mustafabad but retained Rohini and Vishwas Nagar, and also went on to win Gandhi Nagar, Ghonda, Karawal Nagar, Laxmi Nagar and Rohtas Nagar and Badarpur.
The Congress continues to be on zero, and also saw its vote share go down from that in 2015.
The vote share of AAP also declined from 54.34 percent in 2015 to 53.6 percent, while the BJP's vote share has increased from 32.19 percent in 2015 to 38.5 percent.
The vote share of the Congress dropped to 4.26 percent this time from 2015's 9.65 percent. Also, the voter turnout of the city was about five percent less than that in 2015.
In the 2013 Assembly polls, while the Congress had secured a vote share of 24.55 percent, the BJP had secured 33.07 percent vote share and the AAP, which was contesting for the first time, had secured 29.49 percent.
The AAP and the Congress joined hands to form Arvind Kejriwal's 49-day government.
The Aam Aadmi Party had changed the political picture of Delhi since its formation in 2012. While the assembly polls before 2012 were between the Congress and the BJP, the assembly elections since 2013 had been all about AAP in Delhi.
The BJP got its highest vote share in the first-ever Delhi Assembly polls in 1993 -- 42.82 percent votes -- and had formed a government. The vote share of Congress was 34.48 percent during that time.
Later, between 1998 and 2008, Congress was elected having more than 40 percent vote share. While the BJP's vote share in 1998, 2003 and 2008 was 34.02 percent, 35.22 percent and 36.33 percent, that of Congress was 47.76 percent, 48.13 percent and 40.30 percent respectively.