New Delhi: Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Bansuri Swaraj, who made her electoral debut from the New Delhi Lok Sabha seat in place of sitting MP Meenakshi Lekhi against Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) Somnath Bharti, is leading by nearly 26,000 votes, as of 12:30 PM, according to Election Commission data.
The New Delhi Lok Sabha constituency is a high-profile seat established in 1952 and is one of the oldest constituencies in India. From freedom fighter Sucheta Kripalani to stalwarts like Atal Bihari Vajpayee and L.K. Advani, several prominent politicians have contested from here.
Swaraj’s victory on the seat would affect her future prospects in the party. Many within BJP were eyeing the candidature for the constituency, when the party’s central leadership decided to field her.
Swaraj’s candidature was used as an opportunity by AAP as well as Congress to accuse Prime Minister Narendra Modi of not walking the talk on “parivarvaad” — an issue he has often raised to criticise the Opposition. Swaraj is the daughter of BJP leader and former Union minister late Sushma Swaraj.
Swaraj was appointed a secretary of the Delhi BJP last August and was first made the co-convenor of the legal cell of the party. She had previously told ThePrint that she had started her political career as an ABVP worker (Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad).
“I started working for the party a decade ago in the courts as a lawyer. And later on, I took on a more formalised role, first as a co-convenor of the legal cell; later on, I graduated, when the party bestowed on me the responsibility of a secretary of the Delhi BJP. I’m somebody who had an opportunity to work from the ground up,” she had said.
She has worked as the additional advocate general of Haryana, and also runs a private practice. The BJP leader was enrolled with the Bar Council of Delhi in 2007 and is an advocate of the Supreme Court. She studied Law at Oxford University.
Many in the Delhi BJP were said to have questioned Swaraj’s candidature from the New Delhi seat in the place of incumbent BJP MP Meenakashi Lekhi. With the exception of Manoj Tiwari — BJP MP from North East Delhi — the party dropped the names of all of its sitting MPs in Delhi. North West Delhi MP Hans Raj Hans was fielded from Faridkot in Punjab.
In the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, Congress’s Ajay Maken had won the New Delhi seat. In 2014, BJP’s Meenakshi Lekhi had won by over 4.5 lakh votes against AAP’s Ashish Khetan, leaving Ajay Maken behind.
The Lok Sabha elections in Delhi are crucial for the BJP, as the verdict is likely to have a bearing on the assembly polls scheduled for 2025. The results will also determine the party’s strategy vis-à-vis AAP.
With the BJP losing the municipal elections in 2023 and the Delhi assembly polls in 2015, winning the Lok Sabha elections becomes all the more important.
BJP saw a clean sweep in Delhi in both 2014 and 2019, as it won all the seven Lok Sabha seats.
In 2019, Delhi had witnessed a triangular fight between the BJP, AAP and Congress. However, this time, Congress and AAP were contesting together as alliance partners in the INDIA bloc. In Delhi, Congress fought the elections on three seats, while AAP fielded candidates from four, including the New Delhi seat.
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