The Congress swept the Lok Sabha elections in Delhi, with the party pocketing all seven seats in the city-state. Saturday's results, after the convincing victory in last November's Assembly elections, have as good as made the Capital a Congress fortress.

The scale of the sweep is found in the victory margins, the lowest being 93,000 for the party's South Delhi candidate Ramesh Kumar. The victory margin was over a lakh in each of the other six seats.

Meanwhile, after the massacre, the postmortem has begun for BJP in Delhi. But before that, it's the frustration and rage of the party's cadre with the top state leadership that held sway on Saturday. While voters said the Congress landslide — a 7-0 victory — has been a vote of confidence for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, BJP workers say it is also a referendum against the Delhi BJP leadership. “The results show the BJP has completely lost its relevance in Delhi for now,” a senior Delhi Congress leader said. BJP insiders stopped just short of agreeing. In South Delhi constituency, now a rural belt that showed one of the lowest victory margins (just over 90,000 votes), BJP leaders said infighting led to Ramesh Bidhuri’s defeat. In fact, Ramesh Kumar, brother of former Congress candidate Sajjan Kumar, was trailing in the morning — till the late surge in the afternoon saw the result take a U-turn.

A BJP insider said: “MLAs Dharamdev Solanki (Palam), Satprakash Rana (Bijwasan), former Mehrauli MLA Brahm Singh Tanwar and Sher Singh Dagar, who had fought Assembly polls from Mehrauli last year, were all stacked up against Bidhuri. This made an already tenuous situation a few notches harder.”

Party workers also pointed fingers at the choice of candidates. A “weak candidate”, Chetan Chauhan, was pitted against Sandeep Dikshit in East Delhi — “it was no competition”. B L Sharma ‘Prem’, out of active politics for years, and municipal councillor Vijender Gupta — “a nonentity at the national level against Union Minister Kapil Sibal,” as one insider put it — are just two names local leaders are pointing out.

Another Delhi BJP leader said fielding Mahabal Mishra in West Delhi was “one smart move” made by the Congress. “This consolidated the Poorvanchali and Bihari vote in other seats,” the leader said. “BJP totally ignored this vote bank though they have now become a major chunk of Delhi’s electorate.

Insiders said BJP did not have any youth leader to counter the “Rahul Gandhi factor”. BJP workers said the party’s campaign strategy did not go down well with voters. “This is not an American Presidential campaign where personalities pitched against each other,” a BJP leader said. “The leadership should have learnt this from the Assembly polls in which we really didn’t pitch the right issues, and instead projected V K Malhotra as the CM candidate.

“Negative campaigns”, the leader added, also did not strike a chord with the electorate. “Whether it was Vijender Gupta running a smear campaign against Sibal or Goel doing the same to Ajay Maken, the results have shown these do not work.”

Take 5:

Voters’ take on Cong win
* Mandate for Manmohan Singh
* Massive disconnect between BJP and the youth — 25.42% of Delhi’s electorate is between 18 and 25
* A mandate on Congress’s ability to fight terror
* BJP’s traditional trader vote switching sides to Congress
* To ensure a stable five-year government

WHO: Sandeep Dikshit, East Delhi
HOW: Won by over 2.4 lakh votes
WHY: “This victory is a public endorsement of the work done by Delhi government, and also the Congress-led UPA government at the Centre.”

WHO: Mahabal Mishra, West Delhi
WHY: “The central leadership, development work by Sheila Dikshit, and Rahul Gandhi’s popularity among the youth were the three factors that drew voters towards the Congress.”
HOW: Won by 1.3 lakh votes

WHO: Ajay Maken, New Delhi
WHY: “Delimitation actually helped Maken, as he could start anew in the constituency,” says a Congress worker.
HOW: Won by over 1.8 lakh votes

WHO: Kapil Sibal, Chandni Chowk
HOW:Won by over 2 lakh votes
WHY: “Overall, it is a vote for secularism and secular ideology.”

WHO: Krishna Tirath, Northwest Delhi
HOW: Won by over 1.84 lakh votes
WHY: “I attribute this win to Soniaji and Manmohanji, and to the voters who have shown confidence in Congress’s policies.”

WHO: J P Aggarwal, Northeast Delhi
WHY: “People have voted for development and secularism”
HOW: Won by over 2.2 lakh votes

WHO: Ramesh Kumar, South Delhi
WHY: “I had the blessings of Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and Manmohan Singh. And to top it all, the people are well aware about the development work done by my brother Sajjan Kumar.”
HOW: Won by over 93,000 votes