As the country awaits the result of the World’s biggest democratic exercise, News18-IPSOS, an exit poll survey by Network 18, gives an insight into the probable outcome of the results.
News18-IPSOS suggests that BJP candidate Ramesh Bidhuri may emerge as the winner from the seat of South Delhi in the national capital territory of Delhi. Both the Congress and AAP candidates – Vijender Singh and Raghav Chadha – are trailing, according to the Exit Poll.
Chadha has been the national spokesperson of the Aam Aadmi Party. He has also served as an advisor to the Deputy Chief Minister of Delhi and Finance Minister Manish Sisodia and contributed in preparing the state budget. Bidhuri is the sitting MP from South Delhi. He was a three-term MLA from Tughlakabad before becoming the Member of Parliament.
South Delhi remained in the grip of BJP from 1989 to 2009 with leaders like Madan Lal Khurana, Sushma Swaraj and Vijay Kumar Malhotra holding it twice each. In 2009, Sajjan Kumar’s brother Ramesh Kumar of the Congress won the seat defeating Bidhuri by a vote margin of over 12 per cent. In 2014, amid the 'Modi wave', Bidhuri pushed Ramesh Kumar to the third place and won the seat by a margin of 33.8 per cent. Col. Devinder Sehrawat was the runner up, apparently as a result of an AAP-wave. The vote margin between Sehrawat and Bidhuri was a mere 10 per cent.
Ramesh Kumar was denied a ticket to contest the 2019 polls to avoid the controversy mounting from Sajjan Kumar’s alleged involvement in the 1984 riots. Olympic medalist Vijender Singh was fielded by the Congress as a Jat candidate against BJP’s Gujjar. Ramesh Kumar was, however, seen in several of Singh’s rallies.
If Bidhuri wins, the victory may be credited to the divided vote-share between the Congress and AAP.
The Lok Sabha elections in 2019 took place in seven phases across India in the time span of about a month and a half. A total of 543 seats went to polls in which around 900 million voters were expected to exercise their voting rights.
The final results will be announced on May 23.
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