Delhi polls: Development neglect, elusive MLA cost AAP the Greater Kailash seat
In a surprising upset, AAP's Saurabh Bharadwaj lost to BJP's Shikha Roy in Greater Kailash, driven by voter discontent over civic issues.
Beyond the tree-lined avenues, glitzy boutiques and busy markets, swelling disenchantment over a growing pile of civic headaches in Greater Kailash cost the Aam Aadmi Party’s Saurabh Bharadwaj the crucial assembly constituency in south Delhi on Saturday, one in an array of surprise setbacks for the ruling party.
Bharadwaj was defeated by the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Shikha Roy, a two-time councillor who ran a quiet, but effective, campaign that capitalised on voters’ discontentment against one of the AAP’s most senior leaders, a former cabinet minister and vice-chief of the Delhi Jal Board (DJB).
Previously, Roy had told HT, “I know I couldn’t do much earlier because my hands were tied. But unlike AAP, I know what the residents are going through. I want Zamrudpur streets to be cleaned. I want better parking spaces for GK market and improve water accessibility for GK, EOK and other residents. Old people still do not have access to free medical treatment. I want to make things better.”
Roy, 60, beat Bharadwaj, 45, by 3,188 votes, according to data from the Election Commission of India (ECI), reversing the results of the 2020 elections. Five years ago, the AAP leader beat Roy from the same seat by nearly 17,000 votes.
The constituency comprises the plush GK-1, GK-2, and Panchsheel Park neighbourhoods, the middle-class Chittaranjan Park, Masjid Moth, Asiad Village and Kailash Colony enclaves as well as urban villages such as Zamrudpur and Shahpur Jat.
Unease over a raft of unaddressed issues across the sprawling constituency ricocheted against the three-term MLA.
Where residents in colonies complained of broken roads, spiralling traffic and creaking infrastructure, people in urban villages and slum clusters highlighted the area’s outdated sewage systems and lax sanitation.
The AAP also lost the support of the area’s middle- and upper-classes.
“The AAP’s welfare programmes do not benefit middle-class people like us. We used more than 200 units of electricity and our children go to private schools. Bharadwaj should have made pitches for us as well...Some of us have water bills worth ₹80,000 to ₹1 lakh. These are accumulated bills that come out of nowhere. We will have to choose BJP because we are tired of useless freebies…We want real development ,” said Sunil Jain, member of RWA and a resident of Greater Kailash-1, who also said the legislator did little to address residents’ grievances over the past few years.
CL Kapoor, a retired businessman from GK Enclave, had told HT during the voting day, “The parking facility in the entire GK-Pamposh-East of Kailash belt is bad. Our roads need urgent repair. There’s also an urgent need for change in infrastructure which the government has ignored for years”
Meanwhile, residents in unauthorised colonies complained that Bharadwaj “never” visited them. Mohan Prakash, 55, a factory worker, said, “I have lived in Zamrudpur for 20 years. Its crowded, the drainage system needs urgent repair, roads are always dirty and flooded. The overhead wires hand very low…We feel we have been neglected for too long. 20 years back, this was a simple locality. Now, its an overcrowded mess.”
AAP’s freebies and schemes allegedly did not work for the upper, middle and lower class and residents complained of an array of issues that have remain unsolved in south Delhi.
Many also underscored that the crater-ridden Outer Ring Road, which cuts through the assembly constituency had not been repaired even after the bruising monsoon and that the neighbourhood bore the brunt of repeated water supply strains last year.
In a statement to the media, Bharadwaj said, “Everyone saw our graph was good. It (loss) is unexpected. I want to thank all AAP workers and supporters. I want to tell them that they should not be scared. Winning and losing is part of this...Small battles are lost to win bigger battles. I did everything I could as an MLA. We will think about why this happened...I don’t want to comment on why we lost.”
Officials in the BJP said Roy ran a targeted campaign that relied on colony-level meetings instead of large rallies and roadshows. Her meetings focused on highlighting hyper-local issues and shied away from broad narrative-based speeches.
Indeed, Roy’s win came even as few senior BJP leaders campaigned in the segment. That low-key campaign culminated in one of the biggest setbacks for the AAP, which lost its hold on a constituency that once reprised unflinching faith in the young political outfit.