NEW DELHI: Seeing the dismal turnout in the Delhi Assembly polls till the afternoon on Saturday, the BJP mobilized efforts to get voters to the polling booths in the last three hours. The efforts bore fruit and eventually, the voting percentage inched up to 62.59 per cent.
Sources said panic had set in by Sunday afternoon in the BJP camp amid the low turnout of voters. After the sharp rise in voters’ turnout post 4 pm, the saffron party is now keeping its fingers crossed. “After staring at 30 per cent turnout in the afternoon, the BJP leaders went the whole way to get the voters to the polling booths. The party workers reached out to the voters to cast their votes. Now, it has to be seen that almost 27 per cent votes polled in the last three hours work went to which party,” said a senior BJP functionary.
While the voter turnout was about five per cent less than 2015 Assembly elections when the Aam Admi Party (AAP) had swept the polls with 67 of the 70 Assembly seats, the voters improved the tally from the 2019 Lok Sabha elections with two percentage points when the BJP had polled 56 per cent votes, winning all the seven Lok Sabha seats.
The BJP leaders after taking feedback from the Congress counterparts in the city said that some of the big names in the Opposition had also worked hard on the ground to regain the lost turf to revive their political career. “It’s to be seen whether the claims made by the pundits that the Congress gave a walkover to the AAP in the elections are true or not, for the party leaders have argued that they campaigned hard in their respective Assembly constituencies. Some of the Congress leaders have argued that the AAP will need to take the support of the Congress to form the government,” said another BJP functionary. “It’s hard to say as of now which way the outcome would go. We are keeping our fingers crossed. We have fought hard. With no face to project, the BJP may have had some disadvantage,” added the BJP functionary.
Pushing voters to polling booths