New demography post delimitation fails to deter Cong in Delhi

Delimitation which altered the political demography of the seven Parliamentary constituencies in the national capital did not came in the way of Congress from making a clean sweep in the Lok Sabha elections here.

In New Delhi seat, which witnessed considerable addition of trader population in areas like Karol Bagh (SC), Patel Nagar (SC) Rajinder Nagar, RK Puram, Moti Nagar, Malviya Nagar, Greater Kailash and Delhi Cantonment, Ajay Maken, a Punjabi, trounced his BJP rival, Vijay Goel, a Vaishya, who was banking on his community.

Similarly in Chandani Chowk parliamentary constituency, where the number of electors increased from nearly three lakh to 14 lakh due to delimitation, the entire political equation changed significantly with the percentage of Muslim voters shrinking.

Population of backward castes and trader community witnessed an increase in the seat when compared to the 2004 general elections.

However, Congress candidate Kapil Sibal did extremely well even in trader-dominated areas like Model Town (polled 47,525 votes), Shalimar Bagh (46,047 ), Shakur Basti (44,113), Tri Nagar (52,273), Wazirpur (48,084), Model Town (47,525) and Sadar Bazar (54,025).

Electorate in the East Delhi constituency which lost a large area to the new Northeast Delhi constituency but has been given two assembly segments -- Okhla and Jangpura -- too polled in favour of Congress candidate Sandeep Dikshit who defeated BJP's Chetan Chauhan by 2,40,000 votes.

The Congress candidates came out with flying colours in the newly carved out constituencies North-west Delhi -- which has been made a reserved SC seat -- West Delhi and South Delhi taken out from Outer Delhi Lok Sabha seat held by former MP and Congressman Sajjan Kumar.

Voters in West Delhi, which witnessed a mixed demographic profile of Poorvanchalis, Jat and Punjabi communities following delimitation favoured Congress candidate Mahabal Mishra over BJP's Jagdish Mukhi, a three-time MLA.

BJP's stronghold areas such as Rajouri Garden, Hari Nagar, Tilak Nagar, Dwarka and Janakpuri were added to West Delhi Lok Sabha seat.

In North-west Delhi reserved constituency, BSP couldn't make any presence felt despite a considerable chunk of the SC population which stands at 21.52 per cent.

The sitting MP from erstwhile Karol Bagh and Congress candidate Krishna Tirath defeated BJP's Meera Kanwaria by over 1.80 lakh votes.

Tirath crushed BJP in all its traditional Jat-dominated areas such as Rithala by polling 48,918 votes, Mundka (46,732) and Rohini (44,855), all held by BJP MLAs and Kirari where rural voters supported her candidature despite her being a Jatav.

In the post-delimitation scenario, the South Delhi seat which has now Palam, Mehrauli, Chhatarpur, Ambedkar Nagar (SC) and Badarpur added to it, was advantage Ramesh Kumar, a Congress candidate and Sajjan Kumar's younger brother.

The constituency no longer remains 'posh' as earlier due the addition of some areas and BSP was expected to play a spoilsport by eating into the vote share in unauthorised colonies and villages.

However, Congress candidate gave a good fight to BJP's Ramesh Bidhuri while BSP trailed with a mere 88,120 votes.

The party's decision to field a Poorvanchali face, Mahabal Mishra, in West Delhi helped in Northeast Delhi seat too, which got new areas such as Burari and Timarpur, dominated by Poorvanchalis.

Following the delimitation, each of the seven Lok Sabha constituencies in Delhi have an average of 19.78 lakh voters and each of the 10 Assembly constituencies therein an average of 1.97 lakh voters. There are 12 reserved assembly segments across the seven Lok Sabha seats.