Comfortable AAP win to break BJP’S 15-yr MCD rule: Exit polls

People of Delhi know AAP delivers on its guarantees. Delhi will be free of garbage soon. REENA GUPTA, AAP spokesperson

We will do much better than what polls have said. We don’t know their sample size... ASHISH SOOD, Delhi BJP leader

NEW DELHI: The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is likely to take charge of the Delhi municipal body and end the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) 15-year reign of the Capital’s civic administration, a clutch of exit polls predicted on Monday. The Congress, which last helmed Civic Centre between 2002 and 2007, will be restricted to less than 10 wards, according to the polls.

Around 50% of Delhi’s eligible residents on Sunday cast their ballot. The results will be announced on Wednesday.

A prominent survey, India Today-axis Myindia, predicted that the AAP would win between 149 and 171 seats, on the back of a campaign that tried to draw focus on the sanitation mess in the city, blaming the BJP for civic apathy. The BJP, which won 181 seats in 2017, is likely to win 69 to 91 seats and the Congress will be limited to single digits, the poll said.

According to the Newsx-jan Ki Baat exit poll, AAP is likely to win 150 to 175 seats, the BJP 70 to 92 and the Congress four to seven. AAP spokesperson Reena Gupta said, “The people of Delhi know that the AAP delivers on its guarantees. Delhi will be free of garbage soon. We expect to get more seats than the prediction made by exit polls.”

Exit polls are not always accurate and have often got the verdict wrong, but are useful in identifying trends.

However, if the final results are along the lines of the exit polls, it would signal that the BJP didn’t benefit electorally from the Centre’s decision to unify the three municipal corporations, a call that led to the state election commission postponing the municipal polls at the last minute in March this year.

The BJP has governed the civic bodies for 15 years, from 2007 to 2022, and experts said that the party had to fend off anti-incumbency.

The AAP also focussed its attack on city’s sanitation situation, the three garbage mountains and corruption within the civic body, which has seen its functioning impaired significantly thanks to a near-continuous financial crisis.

BJP leaders, for their part, said the final result will be “very different from the exit polls”. Senior Delhi BJP leader Ashish Sood, convener of the party’s municipal election committee, said, “We will do much better than what the exit polls have predicted.”

Delhi Congress chief Anil Chaudhary also said the polls were disconnected from reality.

“I reject these exit polls, as these don’t present the ground reality. There are several areas where we have performed well. As per our survey, Congress is doing well on at least 70 seats.”