New Delhi: As the tables turned on Congress in Delhi polls, several heavyweights including three-time chief minister Sheila Dikshit, four-time MLA A K Walia and senior Delhi BJP leader Vijender Gupta failed to save their seats.
Dikshit and Gupta lost to a debutante Arvind Kejriwal at New Delhi seat. Kejriwal won the high-profile New Delhi constituency defeating Dikshit by more than 25,000 votes while Vijender Gupta had to contend with the third place.
While Kejriwal got 44,269 votes, Dikshit fetched 18,405 and Gupta finished with 17,952. One of the prominent losers in these elections was Kiran Walia, who was the education minister in Dikshit's cabinet.
Walia finished a humiliating third in the Malviya Nagar constituency. The seat was won by Somnath Bharti of AAP with 32,258 votes. Walia could only manage 20,500 votes while Arti Mehra, who finished the runner up, garnered 24,486 votes.
Health and Family Minister A K Walia too had a similar fate. He lost to Vinod Kumar Binny of AAP from Laxmi Nagar seat by around 8,000 votes where the BJP finished third.
Another Congress veteran to fall in this wave of AAP was four-time MLA and PWD minister Rajkumar Chouhan. He lost to 26-year-old Rakhi Birla by 10,585 votes while BJP's Ram Kishor Navariya finished third.
Transport Minister Ramakant Goswami also finished third from Rajinder Nagar constituency which was won by R P Singh of the BJP. He defeated Virender Garg Vyas of AAP by 1,796 votes. It was just two of Dikshit's ministers, Urban Development Minister Arvinder Singh Lovely and Food and Supplies Minister Haroon Yusuf who could save their forts amid the Congress rout.
Lovely managed to defeat BJP's Ramesh Chand Jain by nearly 16,000 votes in the Gandhi Nagar constituency while Yusuf won the Ballimaran seat by 8,093 votes defeating BJP's Moti Lal Sodhi. Lovely was trailing at one point of time but manged to fill the gap at a later stage. Yusuf too had his share of scare as he trailed in the first six rounds but made up to the loss in the next sessions of counting.
Four-time MLA Mukesh Sharma, who was also Parliamentary Secretary to the chief minister, lost to BJP's Pawan Sharma by 6,346 votes. BJP's Jai Bhagwan Aggarwal, Rohini's four-time MLA was handed over a shocking defeat by Rajesh Garg of the AAP.
Aggarwal lost by a mere 1,872 votes Garg while Congress' K K Wadhwa finished third. Rohini was a BJP bastion and its prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi had addressed his maiden rally here in September which had drawn huge crowds.
Another giant to fall in these elections is Dr Yoganand Shastri who was the Speaker in the last assembly. He lost his Mehrauli seat to Parvesh Singh Verma of the BJP who is the son of former Chief Minister Sahib Singh Verma.
Ajay Kumar Malhotra, the son of senior BJP leader Vijay Kumar Malhotra lost the Greater Kailash seat to AAP's Saurabh Bharadwaj by a margin of more than 13,000 votes. AAP's star campaigner Shazia Ilmi lost the R K Puram seat by a slender margin of 326 votes.
She was defeated by Anil Kumar Sharma of the BJP in a thriller, as several times during the counting, the fortunes remained fluctuating. However, amid all this rubble, some of the stalwarts managed to evade any upset.
BJP's Chief Ministerial candidate Harsh Vardhan is one such candidate who registered a whirlwind victory on expected lines. He defeated his nearest rival Vinod Kumar Monga of Congress by more than 30,000 votes.
AAP's Manish Sisodiya also comfortably won the Parparganj seats by 11,476 votes. He defeated BJP's Nakul Bhardwaj while Congress' Anil Kumar finished third.
