BJP’s Delhi run continues, but victory margins decline

Anshita Mehra

New Delhi, June 4

Even as the BJP registered a rather easy third consecutive win in all seven Lok Sabha seats in the Capital, the saffron party’s performance was far from impressive as its victory margins declined.

In the 2014 Lok Sabha poll, BJP candidate Parvesh Sahib Singh Verma won the West Delhi constituency with the highest margin of 2.68 lakh votes, while Udit Raj won North West Delhi seat with the lowest margin of 1.06 lakh votes.

Similarly, in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Harsh Vardhan secured the lowest margin of 2.28 lakh votes from Chandni Chowk seat while Verma again won from West Delhi seat with the highest margin of 5.78 lakh votes.

However, this time around both the highest and the lowest margin of votes by which the BJP candidates won declined considerably.

BJP’s Yogender Chandolia, who won the North West Delhi seat with the highest margin of votes, could secure only 2,90,849 votes more than his nearest rival and Congress candidate Udit Raj. Similarly Bansuri Swaraj won the New Delhi seat with the lowest margin of 78,370 votes, but her victory margin was much lower than that of the BJP candidates in 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha poll.

In 2014, every BJP candidate in Delhi won by a margin of more than one lakh votes, while in 2019, every candidate of the saffron party won by a margin of more than two lakh votes, with two of them — Verma and Hans Raj Hans who contested from North West Delhi — winning by a huge margin of more than five lakh votes.

With only one BJP candidate securing a margin of more than two lakh votes and three managing a victory margin of less than a lakh votes, the 2024 performance of the saffron party has been less impressive.

Praveen Khandelwal, who fared marginally better than Swaraj, won the Chandni Chowk seat by 89,325 votes, while Harsh Malhotra won by 93,663 votes in East Delhi seat.

With a margin of 1,99,013 votes, Kamaljeet Sehrawat won the West Delhi seat, close to the highest victory margin of 2,90,849 votes secured by Chandolia.