New Delhi: Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP) won all seven seats in Delhi on Thursday in a repeat of the 2014 elections and also bettering its vote share by nearly 10 per cent.
The BJP received 56.5 per cent of the total votes polled in Delhi, significantly higher than that 46 per cent vote share it got in the previous general elections.
In contrast, the vote share of the Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which had won 67 out of the 70 Delhi assembly seats in 2015, fell from 33 per cent in 2014 to 18.12 per cent in these elections. Delhi's ruling party finished third on five out of seven seats.
Cricketer-turned-politician Gautam Gambhir of the BJP won by 3 lakh plus votes from East Delhi where he was pitted against Arvinder Singh Lovely of Congress and Atishi Marlena of AAP.
The poll campaign in East Delhi was marred with controversies with the Atishi accusing Gambhir of distributing defamatory pamphlets against her.
In a similar surge for the ruling party, singer-turned-politician Hans Raj Hans has won North West Delhi seat, defeating Gugan Singh. The AAP had accused Hans of converting to Islam and called for his disqualification from contesting a reserved seat. The BJP denied the allegation and demanded an apology from AAP.
Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal in a tweet congratulated PM Modi for his historic win. "I congratulate Narendra Modi for this historic win and look forward to working together for the betterment of the people of Delhi," he wrote.
"We had fielded very good candidates in Delhi and had done a good campaign. All party workers also had put a lot of hard work. We accept people's mandate. We will keep working for the people of Delhi," he said in a tweet written in Hindi.
In North East Delhi, the sitting MP and chief of Delhi BJP unit, Manoj Tiwari defeated three-time chief minister Sheila Dikshit by 366102 votes.
Meanwhile, Ramesh Bidhuri of BJP is ahead with a margin of over 1.7 lakh votes against Raghav Chadha of AAP and Vijender Singh of Congress.
In New Delhi, the incumbent MP, Meenakshi Lekhi of BJP, led by more than 2,56,504 votes, beating Congress's Ajay Makan who lost the seat to her in 2014 general elections.
Chandni Chowk's four-time MP, Dr Harsh Vardhan, looks to retain the seat with a lead of over 2,28,145, ahead of Jai Prakash Agarwal of Congress.
Delhi is set to go into assembly polls in nine months.
Also, read: Union Cabinet to meet on Friday, recommend dissolution of 16th Lok Sabha
