BJP Secures Three of Four Seats with Over 10% Sikh Voter Base

The BJP has done well in Sikh-dominated seats in the Delhi Assembly elections winning three out of four constituencies with more than 10 percent of voters belonging to the community.

The BJP also gained hartly due to the derogatory verbal attacks of AAP leaders during the campaign on tall Sikh leader and Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri, accusing him of settling Rohingyas in the city.

The results of Assembly announced on Saturday stated that from the Sikh-majority constituencies, BJP had taken over Rajouri Garden, Vikaspuri and Moti Nagar whereas Tilak Nagar still eluded them in hands of AAP.

In Delhi, 5 percent Sikhs have constituted nearly half the total population of two crores, which they represent across constituencies though with numbers as diverse as 5,000 in one seat and 55,000 in the other.

Another factor which consolidated Sikh votes for the BJP was the recent decision of the Central government relaxing norms for giving jobs to the members of the families which lost their kith and kin during the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.
In January, Lieutenant Governor V.K. Saxena had allowed full relaxation in required educational qualification and age up to 55 years for 88 applications of government employment for kin of victims of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.

BJP's Manjinder Singh Sira won the Rajouri Garden seat in the current Assembly elections by defeating AAP's Dhanwati Chandela by 18,190 votes. In 2020, Chandela had defeated BJP's Ramesh Khanna by 22,972 votes. Around 30 per cent of voters in the seat are Sikhs.

The AAP retained the Tilak Nagar seat as Jarnail Singh beat BJP's Shveta Saini by 11,658 votes. In the 2020 Assembly elections, Jarnail Singh had beaten BJP's Rajiv Babbar by 28,029 votes. A third of the voters in the constituency are Sikhs.

The BJP can find solace in the fact that its defeat margin has come down by half in the seat, which is an indication of a favorable swing among the Sikh voters in the constituency.

In Moti Nagar, Harish Khurana, son of former chief minister Madan Lal Khurana, of the BJP emerged victorious by beating Shiv Charan Goel of the AAP by 11,657 votes.

Vikaspuri, Delhi’s largest constituency whose 13 per cent of voters are Sikhs, was also won by Pankaj Kumar Singh of the BJP beat Mahinder Yadav of AAP by 6,439 votes.

A Delhi BJP leader said the AAP leader’s allegations against Puri that he settled Rohingyas in Delhi seem to have backfired on them. “They attacked a senior Sikh leader who has devoted his life to the country,” he said.

The BJP's campaign also revolved around exposing AAP's failed promise of paying Rs 1,000 per month to women in Punjab. That line of attack by the BJP did the trick for it in Sikh-dominated constituencies as voters here have relatives in Punjab with whom they could check the truth about the AAP's development model and failures in that state.