Delhi election result: Congress set for 3rd straight Delhi duck

The party did, however, appear to eat into a substantial portion of the Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) votes in a slew of Delhi’s 70 assembly segments, showed counting data as of 11am

The Congress appeared likely to draw a blank in Delhi for a third straight election, with the party not leading in a single seat in the national Capital, initial counting data from the Election Commission of India (ECI) showed on Saturday.

Still, with a quarter of the votes counted, the BJP was ahead in 41 assembly segments. (Representative file photo)

The party did, however, appear to eat into a substantial portion of the Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) votes in a slew of Delhi’s 70 assembly segments, showed counting data as of 11am. It secured 6.7% of the votes counted, as against 43.1% for the AAP and 47.9% for the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Still, with a quarter of the votes counted, the BJP was ahead in 41 assembly segments and the ruling AAP in the other 29.

However, the party that governed Delhi for three straight terms under chief minister Sheila Dikshit between 1998 and 2013, appeared set to secure marginally more votes than in the 2020 elections.

According to ECI data, the party secured 6.8% of the votes counted, as against 4.3% in the 2020 elections.

Several of the party’s key candidates, including Alka Lamba who was fielded from Kalkaji against the BJP’s Ramesh Bidhuri AAP and chief minister Kalkaji and Sandeep Dikshit, who was up against former CM Arvind Kejriwal and senior BJP leader Parvesh Verma, was losing.

ECI data showed the Congress was second in just two seats – Chandni Chowk (Mudit Agarwal) and Kasturba Nagar (Abhishek Dutt).

The party last had a presence in the Delhi Vidhan Sabha in 2013, when it won eight seats and partnered in the short-lived Kejriwal government. In the subsequent elections, 2015 and 2020, it did not win a single segment. That trend appeared to set hold in the polls held on February 5.