The Hindu : New Delhi News : BJP wins Delhi Cantonment polls

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Tuesday, May 20, 2008
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New Delhi

BJP wins Delhi Cantonment polls

Staff Reporter

Terms the victory as a mandate against ‘Congress misrule and price rise’

BJP got five seats of the total eight; Congress got two while one seat went to an Independent
Saffron party says winning trend would continue into the Assembly and Lok Sabha elections

NEW DELHI: Riding on the burning issue of price rise and inflation, coupled with the problems of water and power being faced by the people, the Bharatiya Janata Party on Monday won in five of the eight wards in the Delhi Cantonment Board elections that were held after a decade. The Congress bagged two seats while one seat went to an Independent.

Though the total electorate for the polls was just a shade over 60,000, the outcome has come as a shot in the arm for the BJP in this year of Delhi Assembly elections. The party’s candidates -- Pradeep Kadiyan, Sanjeev Nayyar, Lal Chand Mehrauliya, Neena Sharma and Anupama Tripathi -- won in Uri Enclave, Gopinath Bazar, Jharera, East Mehram Nagar Village and Sadar Bazar Old Nangal. In all these places, the Congress candidates finished second.

The Congress won the Naraina and Sadar Bazar Kabul Line seats where its candidates Sandeep Tanwar and Arun Singh Dhadwal emerged victorious. The party finished a poor third in Subroto Park Civil Zone where the Independent candidate Omwati Lohia was victorious ahead of her BJP rival Neelam Devi.

Following the announcement of the results, there was euphoria in the BJP camp and its Delhi unit president Harsh Vardhan said the trend would continue into the Assembly elections later this year and the Lok Sabha polls whenever they are held. Along with the Deputy Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Prof. Vijay Kumar Malhotra, the Delhi BJP president -- who had earlier demanded use of electronic voting machines fearing rigging otherwise -- termed the victory as a mandate against Congress misrule, price rise, terrorism and corruption.

Angry reaction

The Congress candidates reacted angrily to the poll results and charged that but for the high percentage of invalid votes that were cast due to the absence of electronic voting machines and adhere to the old system of paper ballot, they would have performed better.

The party candidate from Uri Enclave, Ajay Mittar Bhagirath, said that in his ward 485 out of a total of 2,500 votes were declared invalid. “We are taking up the matter with the party executive and will lodge a protest,” he said.

In Gopinath Bazar, too, the number of invalid votes was over 25 per cent -- 857 out of a total of 3,020. Here, too, the Congress candidate Ramesh Jain complained that the polls were not fair and people were not informed properly because of which there was a high percentage of invalid votes.

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