AAP retained the Rajinder Nagar assembly constituency in Delhi as its candidate Durgesh Pathak registered a landslide victory in the bypoll on Sunday, defeating his BJP rival Rajesh Bhatia by a margin of over 11,000 votes. While Bhatia got 28,851 votes in the by-election held on June 23, Congress’s candidate Prem Lata got only 2,014 votes.
Aam Aadmi Party national convener and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal congratulated Pathak on the victory, saying it was a “defeat of dirty politics”, and thanked people for appreciating the work done by his government in the national capital. Gave. Heartfelt thanks to the people of Rajinder Nagar. I am grateful for this immense affection and love from the people of Delhi. It inspires us to work hard and serve,” Kejriwal tweeted in Hindi.
There was a low turnout of 43.75 per cent in the by-election. Fourteen candidates had thrown their caps into the ring, and the contest was largely seen as a fight between a confident AAP and a spirited BJP. According to official figures, Pathak got 40,319 votes, while his nearest rival Bhatia got 28,851 votes. The margin of victory was 11,468 votes. “All rounds of counting have been completed. AAP candidate Durgesh Pathak defeated his nearest rival Rajesh Bhatia (of BJP) by a margin of over 11,000 votes.
Counting of votes began at 8 am amid tight security and 16 rounds were to be held as per the plan. At the beginning of the counting of votes, Pathak had a marginal lead of 1,500 votes over Bhatia, which came down to around 1,000 votes at the end of the fifth round of counting. After the sixth round, Pathak went ahead by a margin of 3,000 votes, reaching an unassailable lead of over 10,000 votes in the ninth round and eventually won by a margin of 11,000 votes.
Pathak took to Twitter to express his gratitude to voters: “Love you Rajinder Nagar.” He also credited his rise to the “leadership of Arvind Kejriwal”. A senior election official said that as the close button of an EVM was found to be ‘not pressed’, additional rounds of counting were taken, hence steps were taken as per the standard operating procedures laid down by the election officials.
The official said that each Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) has a ‘close button’ which is pressed after the polling is over. “During the process of counting, in an EVM, it was found that the close button was not pressed, so it was kept aside and all the 16 scheduled rounds were conducted earlier. And, as per the prescribed standard operating procedures, the data received from the EVMs was compared with the data entered in Form 17C, which accounts for votes and other details. And, as soon as the two were tallied, the counting of votes recorded in this EVM was done in a separate round,” said the official.
Hence, a total of 17 rounds were conducted, he said, adding that if there was any mismatch in the data, there would have been another SOP for the same. According to data shared by election officials, out of the total 72,283 votes in the final counting, 72,060 were cast through EVMs, while 223 were postal votes.
546 votes were cast in NOTA category. Potable water supply, sewer lines, broken roads and new liquor policy were major election issues for the voters of Rajinder Nagar constituency. Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia also congratulated Pathak and tweeted in Hindi, “Many congratulations to my dear brother @ipathak25 (Durgesh Pathak) on being elected MLA from Rajendra Nagar Vidhan Sabha. Congratulations to all your workers on the victory.” He said, ‘@ArvindKejriwal ji lives in the heart of the people of Delhi.
Recently, a by-election had to be held after AAP leader Raghav Chadha left the seat after being elected to the Rajya Sabha. Chadha was an MLA from Rajinder Nagar assembly seat. Officials said that this was the first election exercise in Delhi after the outbreak of Kovid-19 epidemic in 2020. A total of 1,64,698 voters were eligible to exercise their franchise in the by-election – 92,221 were male, 72,473 were female and four were of the third gender.
As per the data shared by the Delhi CEO’s office, there are 1,899 voters in the 18-19 age group in this assembly seat. The 2022 bypoll turnout was significantly lower than the figures recorded in the 2020 elections, when the turnout in Rajinder Nagar was 58.27 per cent – 58.09 per cent male voters and 58.5 per cent female voters.
According to officials, 43.67 per cent male and 43.86 per cent female voters had cast their vote in the by-elections held on June 23. The percentage of voters of the third gender was 50 percent. The turnout in Rajinder Nagar bypoll was less than the figures recorded in Rajouri Garden bypoll (46.5 per cent) and Bawana bypoll (44.8 per cent). In the 2015 elections, voting was held in two assembly seats of Delhi. 72 percent and 61.83 percent respectively.
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