NEW DELHI: Even though the Bahujan Samaj Party was not in the race for any of the seven Delhi Lok Sabha seats, they fielded candidates in five with the aim of eating into Dalit votes. Their strategy has not been successful in the last two elections. This time, they couldn’t even improve their vote share from 2014.
In 2014, the BSP bagged 1.23 per cent of the votes polled in Delhi, while this year the share has seen a slight decline to 1.08 per cent. In 2009, when the party gained the status of a national party, they had a vote share of 5.3 per cent in the city.
BSP’s Delhi chief Surendra Kumar said, “This is the public’s verdict. I can’t really say what went wrong. We need to strengthen our connect with the people and to take our efforts for better results further.”
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Unlike the major players, the BSP gave ticket to a Muslim candidate in the capital but Shahid Ali, who fought from Chandni Chowk, could only win 8,879 votes (0.92 per cent).
Their strongest candidate Rajveer Singh, who contested from the Northeast constituency, received 37,831 votes (2.59 per cent). Their other candidates — Sanjay Kumar (East), Siddhant Gautam (South) and Sita Saran Sen (West) received 19,090 (1.52 per cent), 14,761 (1.22 per cent) and 13,269 (0.92 per cent) votes in their respective constituencies.