New Delhi [India], Feb 11 : The performance of the Congress party in Delhi Assembly elections 2020 has been worst ever since 1993, when Delhi became a Union Territory with a legislature and had its first Assembly elections.
Not only did the Congress draw a blank in this election, its vote percentage too slid to below 5 per cent, which is almost half as compared to the 2015 Assembly elections.
The Congress had fielded its candidates on 66 of the 70 seats while giving four seats to its ally Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD).
The 63 of the 66 Congress candidates forfeited their deposits, even on the seats where Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi campaigned for the party.
The party even failed to save the deposit of state president Subhash Chopra's daughter Shiv Chopra, who contested from Kalkaji Assembly seat.
On this seat, the party had campaigned with full force with big star campaigners including Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh and Rajya Sabha MP Raj Babbar campaigning for her.
As per the Election Commission of India (ECI) rules, if a candidate fails to get a minimum of one-sixth of the total valid votes polled, their security deposit goes to the treasury.
Poonam Azad, wife of party's campaign committee chief Kirti Azad, who contested from Sangam Vihar, got only 2,601 votes.Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi had addressed four rallies in the last week of the campaign. Rahul had addressed four meetings, of which, Priyanka was present with him only in two meetings. On these four seats, Congress got 15 per cent votes in Jangpura while in Kondli, Matiamahal and Sangam Vihar deposit of the Congress candidates was forfeited. The duo's rallies were apparently planned to reach out to the voters from the Muslim community, but the party lost miserably in all the Muslim- dominated Assembly seats like Ballimaran, Matia Mahal, Mustafabad, Seelampur and Babarpur.Rahul had addressed a rally in Kondli and campaigned for two Dalit candidates but they too lost their deposits.
The story remained same in case of Purvanachal vote bank with Priyanka Gandhi campaigning for Poonam Azad in Sangam Vihar Assembly seat, who came fourth in the contest and secured votes even less than the BSP candidate.Only on three seats -- Gandhinagar, Seelampur and Kasturba Nagar -- the Congress candidates could make the contest triangular and save their deposits. In terms of vote percentage, party leader Abhishek Dutt secured more than 20 per cent votes on the Kasturba Nagar seat.
Devendra Yadav in Badli and Arvinder Singh Lovely in Gandhinagar also garnered around 20 per cent votes. Of these, BJP won in Gandhinagar.
The RJD candidates too lost their deposit on three seats. The RJD candidates got less than NOTA (None of the Above) on these seats.
( With inputs from ANI )