Manoj Tiwari retains NE, Kanhaiya loses

Samad Hoque

New Delhi, June 4

The North East Delhi seat, where a close contest was expected between BJP’s Manoj Tiwari and Congress’ Kanhaiya Kumar, turned out to be a one-sided affair. Tiwari defeated Kumar by a margin of 1,38,778 votes, surprising many neutrals.

Former JNUSU president Kumar was highly anticipated to break the winning streak of the Bhojpuri singer-turned-politician. However, Tiwari went on to win for the third time. A week after the announcement of Congress candidates in Delhi, Kumar and Udit Raj for the North West constituency faced heavy protests from the state party unit, being labelled as “outsiders”. Former Delhi Congress president Arvinder Singh Lovely resigned from his post, stating his opposition to the alliance with the AAP. He later defected to the BJP.

Tiwari, who hails from Varanasi, is also considered an outsider. But he enjoys a mass following among migrant voters from Bihar and UP due to his Bhojpuri songs.

Additionally, he has been elected twice from the constituency, while Kumar was considered a newcomer. BJP stalwarts Narendra Modi and Rajnath Singh also campaigned for Tiwari. Kumar, on the other hand, did not receive adequate support from the party’s state unit, and his campaign was largely managed by the Congress’ student wing — National Students’ Union of India — and some of his JNU colleagues. This was also Kumar’s second consecutive defeat in the Lok Sabha elections, having lost to BJP’s Giriraj Singh in Begusarai in 2019.

Initially, Kumar reached out to AAP for support from local MLAs of the North East constituency. Meanwhile, the Congress appointed Sachin Pilot as a coordinator for the seat.

A resident of North East Delhi said, “The coalition between the parties could not reach the public. Voters were searching for the other party’s symbol on the poll day; therefore, the votes could not be turned.”

“The Capital has continued to vote in a similar pattern as it did in the 2014 and 2019 elections, with the notion of keeping Narendra Modi in the Centre and AAP in the state government,” he added.

“I want to thank the people of my constituency. Delhi gave us all seven seats. This was a tough election, and this is the win of voters,” Tiwari said after the victory.

Couldn’t find symbol

The coalition between the parties could not reach the public. Voters were searching for the other party’s symbol on the poll day; therefore, the votes could not be turned. — A North East Delhi resident