The Delhi Legislative Assembly election was held on 4 December 2013, with the result announced
on 8 December. The Bharatiya Janata Party won a plurality,
closely followed by Aam Aadmi Party, in its first election; this resulted in an hung assembly.
After the BJP refused to form a government in the hung assembly, the Aam Aadmi Party's
Arvind Kejriwal became chief minister with "not conditional" support from the Indian
National Congress.
Electoral law change This was one of the first five elections in
which the Election Commission of India implemented a "None of the above" voting option, allowing
the electorate to register a neutral vote but not to outright reject candidates. In
a first, the Election Commission of India also appointed Central Awareness Observers,
whose main task was to oversee voter awareness and facilitation.
Contesting parties There were 810 candidates running for office,
including 224 independents. BJP and SAD formed a pre-poll alliance; SAD
contested four seats, while BJP contested the rest.
Campaign The AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal called the
BJP's Harsh Vardhan the "Manmohan Singh of the BJP" as incapable of stemming the "rot"
in Delhi's governance. He added: "We will help the people of Delhi get rid of Congress
misgovernance first, and then ensure change at the national level in the Lok Sabha polls."
However, Vardhan was supported by the BJP's prime ministerial candidate in the Indian
general election, 2014, Narendra Modi. The Hindustan Times suggested that the Rajnath
Singh-appointed BJP Delhi leader, Vijay Goel, though organisationally competent, lost favour
due to his exclusion of established regional leaders in reorganising local units. Singh
was still viewed as reluctant to "change horses in mid-stream" but agreed. Modi led the charge,
with other party leaders, to have Vardhan as the chief ministerial candidate and Goel
himself agreed to the nomination of Vardhan. The AAP released its first electoral manifesto.
Opinion polls Number of seats
Vote share Election
There were 11,753 polling stations, including the presence of EVMs, while 630 identified
as critical and hyper critical. There were 11.9 million eligible voters, of which 6.6 million
were men and 5.3 million were women while there were 405,000 first time voters. 32,801
Delhi Police personnel and 107 companies of central paramilitary forces were deployed
to ensure a peaceful election. Polling stations opened at 8:00 am and turnout was 66%.
Polling stations in Tuglaqabad, Karol Bagh, Trilokpuri and Badarpur reportedly had long
waits because EVMs dysfunctioned. In Jungpura, Badli, Krishna Nagar and Kondli constituencies,
some voters complained that their names were on the electoral rolls and that they could
not vote. After voting party leaders expressed their
opinion. Kejriwal said he is confident of a positive result for his party. Vardhan claimed
the BJP was "far ahead" of the INC and Aam Aadmi Party. "I can tell you very categorically
that we are far ahead of Congress and the new entrant in Delhi politics. I am 100 per
cent confident about our victory. I think nobody can make any dent in our vote bank.
If there is any contest or fight, it is between the Congress and the new entrant." Dikshit
said she had her "fingers crossed" on the outcome, while national party leader Sonia
Gandhi said from her Nirman Bhavan polling station: "We will win." At many places people
with disabilities could not vote due to inaccessible polling booths.
In all over 43,000 postal ballots were received, an increase from the last election's 1,600
postal ballots. The Delhi Election Commission announced that 2,000 Central Paramilitary
Force and Delhi Police personnel were at the vote counting centres in the city on the day
of the result announcement and CCTV cameras and live streaming of proceedings through
web casting, two layers of security cover have been set at all the 14 counting centres.
Delhi Chief Electoral officer Vijay Dev said: "Paramilitary force forms the inner circle
of security of centres while adequate numbers of Delhi Police personnel will ensure safety
from outside. Counting of votes will start from 8 AM tomorrow and during the first hour
postal ballots will be counted." The postal ballots were counted before the EVM votes.
Exit polls showed the BJP in the lead to possibly form a government on its own, followed by
the AAP and the incumbent INC in third place; others in general were fourth with the BSP
following. Result
Notably, the INC's Chaudhary Prem Singh lost in the Ambedkar Nagar constituency, he held
the seat since 1993 and had not lost a single election in 50 years; however Ashok Kumar
of the AAP won the seat. Incumbent Chief Minister Sheila Dixit lost her New Delhi constituency
seat to AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal by a margin that was double her total votes and was also
less than 500 votes more than the BJP's Vijender Kumar; she then submitted her resignation
to Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung.
Reactions Former Chief Minister Sheila Dixit said: "We
accept our defeat and we will analyse what went wrong. We respect what the people of
Delhi have decided and thank them for supporting us for last 15 years."
Government formation As no party won a majority of the 70 seats
in the assembly, if the necessary coalition government is not possible, Delhi would be
put under president's rule until a new election is held within six months. However, the INC,
BJP and AAP have all said they would not seek alliances with each other. The other option
was to try to bring in independents; though since there are not enough, the media speculated
that the other option would be lure away MLAs from another party.
As the BJP won 31 seats, while its alliance partner Shiromani Akali Dal won one seat,
they gained a plurality and would have the first right to form a new government. However,
they declined the offer from Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung to form a new government citing
an inability to obtain majority. Jung then invited the Aam Aadmi Party to form the government.
Kejriwal wrote to BJP national leader Rajnath Singh and INC national leader Sonia Gandhi
for clarification on 18 issues before seeking their support in forming a coalition. The
BJP did not reply and the INC agreed to 16 of the 18 issues and offered its outside support.
The AAP then sought public opinion through a variety of mediums such as via community
meetings, text messages and pamphlets about whether or not it should take the support
of the INC. AAP then formed a minority government with outside support from the INC. In a letter
to the Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung, the AAP did not however mention that it has the
support of the INC. Jung then sent his recommendations to President Pranab Mukherjee. Kejriwal was
then sworn in as 7th Chief Minister of Delhi on 28 December, leading the youngest cabinet
in Delhi ever. M. S. Dhir was elected as the speaker of the legislative assembly on 3 January
2014. Amongst its first tasks, the AAP initiated
a corruption response mechanism in a "durbar"; it also retracted the FDI in multi-brand retail
that the previous government had sanctioned. Kejriwal said that though this would give
consumers more options it has been shown that it "leads to loss of jobs to a very large
extent. There is huge unemployment in Delhi and AAP government does not wish to increase
this unemployment. Delhi is not prepared for FDI." Yet he added that he was not against
FDI by itself but that it needed to occur on a case-by-case basis.
Government resignation After 49 days, Kejriwal resigned as a chief
minister following the failure of the introduction of Delhi's Jan Lokpal Bill in the assembly
on 14 February 2014. President's rule was then imposed and the assembly was kept in
suspended animation. References