New Delhi, Feb 8 The AAP’s decisive defeat in the Delhi Assembly election on Saturday is likely to impact its dominance in the Municipal Corporation in Delhi (MCD) where two of its councillors have become legislators and opened the door for the rival BJP to try and wrest power.
The reduced strength of the AAP in MCD comes in the backdrop of the party encountering cross-voting and managing to get its candidate Mahesh Kumar Khichi elected as mayor with great difficulty in November 2024.
Also, with the AAP’s two councillors getting elected as legislators, the party's position in the civic body is likely to again change and bring in additional instability in the municipal corporation. Aaley Mohammed Iqbal and Mukesh Goyal are the two AAP councillors who will leave the municipal House.
In the 2022 civic elections, the AAP won 134 wards, the BJP won 104 wards and the Congress bagged nine wards. But the parties’ tally has continued to change since then, primarily, due to defections.
During the past three years, the BJP narrowed the gap and raised its seats to 120 as against AAP’s 122. One seat is vacant in the municipal House since BJP’s Kamaljeet Sehrawat was elected as West Delhi MP.
In the current Assembly election, BJP’s councillors have also won as legislators, including Neelam Pahalwan from Najafgarh and Gajendra Daral from Mundka.
“If a bypoll is ordered or more defections take place in the coming days, the BJP may come back to power in the MCD,” said a former BJP councillor who was elected as a legislator on Saturday.
In November 2024, Khichi, a Dalit candidate fielded by the Arvind Kejriwal-led party, defeated the BJP’s Kishan Lal by a wafer-thin margin of three votes. While Khichi got 133 votes, Lal secured 130 votes. Two votes were declared invalid. The eight Congress councillors did not take part in the election.
On Saturday, the results of the Delhi Assembly elections were declared giving the BJP a massive victory after a gap of 27 years.
In the 70-member House, the BJP won 48 seats and the AAP was reduced to 22. The Congress failed to open its account for the third successive election.
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