New Delhi: Battered and shattered Congress, which got a breather by securing second slot in the Rajouri Garden seat on Thursday, lost no time to corner the AAP by taking a delegation to President Pranab Mukherjee, demanding immediate action on the Shunglu committee report.
The BJP registered a huge victory in the Rajouri Garden Assembly bypoll in the national capital today handing a humiliating defeat to the ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which finished a distant third and even lost deposit. After the results, a Congress delegation, headed by Congress committee chief Ajay Maken, went to President Pranab Mukherjee’s residence demanding that immediate action should be taken against AAP over the findings of the three-member Shunglu committee, which found “gross misuse of power by the city government.” On Thursday, Mr Maken appeared confident of the party’s prospects of winning the MCD elections scheduled for April 23 and said that Congress will emerge as a “dark horse”. On Thursday, the Congress staged a turnaround of sorts by getting around 33 per cent of the total votes cast, in a jump of over 21 per cent over the 2015 Assembly polls.
The party, which had faced a wipeout in the 2015 Assembly elections, not winning any seats after ruling the city for three consecutive terms, had got mere nine per cent votes from the Rajouri Garden seat then.
Congress’ Meenakshi Chandela finished second with 25,950 votes while AAP’s Harjeet Singh managed to get only 10,243 votes, less than one-sixth of the total votes polled, and lost deposit.
BJP-SAD joint candidate Manjinder Singh Sirsa bagged 40,602 seats, over 50 per cent of the total votes polled, in a boost for the saffron party ahead of the April 23 municipal polls.
