City voters leave no place for fringe players, independents

By giving the Bharatiya Janata Party clear majority in all the three municipal corporations, Delhi’s voters have ensured that the fringe players and the independents will not come into play.

During a large migrant population, several regional parties contest civic polls in Delhi. Some of them like the BSP and the JDU contest on a large number of seats and win some seats. This time, however, neither of them got enough seats to make a difference to the fortunes of either the winning or the losing side.

All the 14 smaller parties that contested this time got less vote share than NOTA.

The BSP managed to win only three seats while the INLD and Samajwadi Party won one seat each.

BSP’s vote share continues to dip. From 14.05% in 2008 assembly polls, it came down to 1.3% in the 2015 assembly elections. The party, which was hoping to win some seats in Delhi, failed to make a mark, after its poor show in the recently concluded UP assembly election. “We have performed fairy well and not disappointed by the election result. Our winning candidate will continue to work for the welfare of public,” said a BSP official.

JDU chief Nitish Kumar had himself addressed rallies to augments his candidate’s chances. However, the party’s vote share is even less than NOTA. It failed miserably. Swaraj India, formed by the AAP rebels, could not manage to win a single seat. Party president Yogendra Yadav had said “anything above zero is a bonus”.

Hinting that the party will contest the next Lok Sabha and assembly elections in Delhi, Yadav said, “Fighting upcoming elections in Delhi would be a natural process for the party to strengthen its presence.”

Yadav told HT, “I didn’t had much expectations from this election as I had fought it to build a base in Delhi. I was more concerned about the voting percentage than the number of seats as it will give a clearer picture.”