AAP finished second in 20 seats,NOTA got more votes than Shazia’s loss margin

Of the 20 AAP candidates who finished second,only two seats were lost to the Congress and 18 to the BJP.

In RK Puram,where AAP’s Shazia Ilmi lost to BJP’s Anil Kumar Sharma by the thinnest margin of 326 votes,at least 528 voters had stamped NOTA.

Congress’s two-time sitting MLA from Sultanpur Majra,Jai Kishan,managed a narrow win over AAP’s Sandeep Kumar by 1,112 votes.

The party managed five more second positions where it lost to BJP by a margin of less than 3,000 votes. They were Vijender Garg Vijay from Rajinder Nagar,Jitender Singh Tomar from Tri Nagar,Dharambir Singh from Kalkaji,Devinder Kumar Sehrawat from Bijwasan and Rajesh Rishi from Janakpuri.

The AAP runner-up who lost by the biggest margin was Kirari candidate Ranjan Prakash. He was up against BJP’s sitting MLA Anil Jha,who won by 48,526 votes.

Okhla candidate Irfanullah Khan lost to Congress sitting MLA Asif Mohd Khan by 26,545 votes. As has been the trend in Muslim-dominated areas of Delhi,fearing a Narendra Modi-led BJP government,Okhla too voted for the now Congress candidate Asif Khan. After being elected on a Rashtriya Janata Dal ticket,Asif Khan had joined the Congress in August.

Another big-margin blow came to the AAP in the Rithala constituency,where its candidate Harish Awasthi lost to BJP sitting MLA Kulwant Rana by 25,826 votes. In the Bawana constituency,AAP candidate Manoj lost to BJP’s Gugan Singh by 25,639 votes.

Six AAP candidates lost to BJP by a margin between 3,000 and 10,000 votes.

Among them was Praveen Kumar,of ‘Mahabharat-Bheem’ fame,who lost to BJP’s Mahander Nagpal by 5,574 votes in Wazirpur. The others were Bhavna Gaur from Palam,Narinder Singh Sejwal from Mehrauli,Gulab Singh from Matiala,Kapil Mishra from Karawal Nagar and Ravi Kumar Suryan from Dwarka.