The incredulity about the Muslim community’s reservations about voting for the BJP and its prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi was laid to rest on Friday when the party succeeds in occupying all the seven Lok Sabha constituencies of Delhi.
The Delhi chief electoral officer released the data which indicated a volte-face in the Muslim community’s support for the Aam Aadmi Party in the National Capital.
BJP candidate Harsh Vardhan in the Chandni Chowk parliamentary constituency subjugated his AAP rival Ashutosh in Sadar Bazar by 17,623 votes.
Similarly, in Ballimaran and Chandni Chowk too, the BJP candidate enjoyed a much larger vote share than Ashutosh. “There is no such thing that any community will be sidelined or marginalised if BJP is in power. We do not believe in such politics,” Harsh Vardhan said.
While many talked about Kapil Sibal continuing to enjoy the minority community’s faith, the poll results told a different tale. The two- time Congress MP, who had won by a margin of over 2 lakh votes last time, knocked back at the third spot in Chandni Chowk.
If the comments from member of the clergy and members of the community are anything to go by, then the Muslims have decided not to repose any faith in the Congress only because they had been taken for granted for the last 10 years.
The community not only lost faith in the Congress, but it also turned away from the AAP. The clowning around in the Delhi Assembly had clearly spelt disaster for the Arvind Kejriwalled party.
Although, AAP candidates had banked heavily on a secure Muslim vote bank in Delhi, this reversal in trend across all seven parliamentary constituencies in the Capital is emblematic of the fact that the community have moved beyond the past citation to Modi’s alleged involvement in the Godhra riots. It also gives an idea that the minority community is ready to give the BJP a chance at governance too.
In North- East Delhi constituency, which has a sizeable Muslim population in Mustafabad and Babarpur Assembly constituencies, BJP candidate Manoj Tiwari, who was at the outset relying upon a huge vote bank from the Purvanchali population, now enjoys the vote of the Muslim population as well.
Furthermore, the BJP’s victory on Friday was celebrated by a large section of the Muslim population, stating that they felt no fear in voting for the party.
Matiala and Najafgarh are the two areas in the West Delhi where Parvesh Singh Verma, a BJP candidate won by the largest margin, polled 1.11 lakh votes from Matiala and 80,529 votes from Najafgarh whereas AAP’s Jarnail Singh polled merely 57,492 and 30,850 votes respectively from these areas. The two areas have a large Muslim population.
“I was confident of getting the highest margin in the city. The people of all communities have gone all out to extend their support to the party and all this talk about Muslims being sidelined is rubbish. Every community is equal for us and we believe in working equally hard for all of them,” Parvesh said.