* AAP a beneficiary of Cong, BSP vote share
Chandigarh, Senior BJP leader and assistant media advisor to Punjab Government Vineet Joshi today said the creditable victory of the AAP in the Delhi elections cannot be construed as a downfall of the BJP given that the vote share of the saffron party has remained more or less the same as in the 2013 assembly election.
He said the elections were in fact a complete rout of the Congress, BSP and other fringe parties who lost a significant vote share this time. Vineet Joshi opined that the victory of the AAP was essentially an outcome of the transfer of vote share of the beleaguered Congress, BSP and other parties to the AAP.
Vineet Joshi said, “In 2013 Delhi elections, the BJP had won 32 out of 70 contested seats. It’s vote share was 33.07%. The 2015 elections in Delhi have left the BJP vote share almost the same. According to the Election Commission data, the BJP’s vote share has gone down by just about one percent, bringing it at to 32.1%.”
Vineet Joshi said the BJP continues to remain resurgent under the leadership of Prime Minister Modi which is evident from the fact that the party won all the assembly elections in Haryana, Maharashtra, Jharkhand and gave an impressive never before performance in Jammu. The assistant media advisor said the Congress needs to worry about its political fate. “The Congress has been completely obliterated seat-wise and shrunk considerably in vote share. As many as 62 of the 70 Congress candidates have forfeited their security deposit as they could not even get the required 15% votes,” Vineet Joshi held.
The Congress, he said, had won 8 out of 70 contested seats and managed a vote share of 24.55% in the 2013 Delhi elections. But in 2015, the Congress has got only 9.8% vote share, a loss of 15% vote share. “The BSP which had 5.35% vote share in the last elections is now at a dismal 1.3%. This explains the transfer of vote share in Delhi to the AAP which was its direct beneficiary and gained 25 percent vote share,” Joshi said.
The BJP leader said the national Leadership of the AAP had begun campaigning in Delhi since May 2014 when the national leaders of the BJP were busy with assembly elections in Maharashtra, Haryana, Jammu & Kashmir and Jharkhand. He said the BJP has a pan India presence and organisational structure with state governments in Gujarat, Chattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Jharkahnd, Haryana, Goa, Punjab and likely one in J&K. Joshi said history is testimony to the fact that while AAP performed more than even its expectations, in Sikkim two different parties have won all the seats in the 32-member House in different elections. “The unconceivable results were achieved in 1989 and 2009 by the Sikkim Sangram Parishad (SSP) and the Sikkim Democratic Front (SDF), respectively when they won all seats,” Vineet Joshi said.