NEW DELHI: The results of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) by-elections were declared on Tuesday, with the BJP winning 7 of the 12 seats, AAP securing 3, Congress 1 and the All India Forward Bloc opening its account with a victory in Chandni Mahal.With this outcome, the BJP now holds 122 seats in the 250-member House, remaining four short of the majority mark. AAP’s tally stands at 102, Congress at 9, while the All India Forward Bloc has 1. The Indraprastha Vikas Party (IVP), which did not contest the bypolls, continues to have 16 councillors.A major upset for AAP came from Chandni Mahal, a seat the party had won with the highest margin in the 2022 MCD polls but where it slipped to third position this time. Mohammad Imran, backed by former MLA and ex-AAP leader Shoaib Iqbal, won the seat by 4,592 votes, marking Forward Bloc’s entry into the MCD. The seat had fallen vacant after AAP’s Aaley Iqbal Mohammad won the Matia Mahal Assembly seat in February. AAP fielded Muddasir Usman Qureshi, while BJP nominated Sunil Sharma. Shoaib Iqbal, who quit AAP on November 9 after being denied a ticket for his preferred candidate, campaigned actively for Imran.The BJP, which previously held 9 of the 12 seats, managed to retain only 7—seen as a setback for the party. It lost Sangam Vihar-A and Mundka, both attributed to public resentment against local BJP MLAs. In Sangam Vihar-A, the seat vacated by BJP’s Chandan Choudhary after her election to the Assembly, Congress candidate Suresh Chaudhary won by 3,268 votes. AAP secured the Mundka seat amid discontent over BJP MLA Gajendra Daral. The party also won Naraina, where it campaigned against the BJP for fielding an “outsider.”Meanwhile, BJP candidate Anita Jain registered the largest victory margin of the bypolls—10,101 votes—from Shalimar Bagh-B. The seat was earlier held by Chief Minister Rekha Gupta, who resigned after winning the Assembly polls. In Greater Kailash, BJP’s Anjum Mandal won by 365 votes.The BJP also reclaimed the Chandni Chowk seat from AAP, winning by 1,182 votes.In the 2022 civic elections, AAP had emerged as the single largest party with 134 seats, but the political landscape shifted ahead of the April 2025 mayoral polls when 16 AAP councillors defected to form the Indraprastha Vikas Party, giving the BJP a crucial numerical advantage in the House.
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