Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Feb 5: Most of the exit polls of the Delhi Assembly elections are showing exit doors to the ruling Aam Aadmi Party predicting a possible come back for the BJP after a gap of 27 years.
The Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP may suffer a major setback as majority of the pollsters are predicting that the saffron camp might plunge back to victory in the capital while the Congress is likely to maintain its consistency of suffering total wash-outs in the national capital. Only a couple of pollsters are giving the Congress a couple of seats in the 70-member Delhi Assembly while most others predict zero return for the party.
Voters across 70 Assembly constituencies in Delhi exercised their franchise to choose their government on Wednesday. Voting started at 7 am and continued till 6 pm.
A large number of media groups had joined the Delhi exit polls and several of them have also predicted a clean sweep by the AAP for the third time though with a reduced number of seats. Some of them have given the AAP even as much as 46 to 52 seats, while the AAP held 62 seats in the outgoing Assembly, and in contrast the pollsters favouring the BJP have predicted 39 to 60 seats for the saffron party.
Most of the AAP leaders, however, have rejected the exit polls outcome claiming that every time the party was shown losing in the exit polls but was eventually found to have swept the polls and a similar result was expected this time too, they maintained.
The AAP leader Reena Gupta said, “You look at any exit poll historically, AAP is always given a smaller number of seats, whether its 2013, 2015 or 2020. But whatever is shown, AAP gets a lot a greater number of seats in reality. AAP will register a historic victory, and Arvind Kejriwal will become CM for the fourth time.”
Sandeep Dikshit, Congress candidate from New Delhi constituency, claimed that the people of Delhi “want change” and were “fed up” with AAP. On exit polls predictions, he said, “I am assuming the exit polls are correct but the final results will come on Feb 8. “I thought congress would do much better,” he added.
While reacting on the exit poll predictions, AAP leader Anurag Dhanda on Wednesday said “AAP doesn’t come to power in surveys, but forms government eventually.” He added, “I don’t think all the surveys are against us. If you look at it historically, AAP doesn’t come to power in surveys, but forms government eventually… We are encouraged with the voting percentage, which is close to 67% of 2015.”
The Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party first came to power in 2013 with the outside support of the Congress.
In 2015, as Congress withdrew its support and elections took place again. The AAP swept the polls winning 67 seats. In 2020, the AAP won 62 seats.
