Arvind Kejriwal should resign after Rajouri Garden bypoll defeat: Delhi BJP

The Dehi BJP on Thursday sought Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s resignation on moral grounds while pointing out the AAP party’s loss in the Rajouri Garden bypoll. Further, they also said that this is the “beginning of the end” for Aam Aadmi Party in the city.

The party said the bypoll was the semifinal of the April 23 MCD election where the people of Delhi will also reject AAP which has “failed” to deliver good governance in the city.

Addressing a press conference, BJP national vice-president and party’s Delhi unit in-charge Shyam Jaju said Delhiites will teach a lesson to the Aam Aadmi Party in the upcoming MCD election in a similar way the people of Rajouri Garden did in the bypoll.

“People are sad with AAP’s performance in Delhi. Kejriwal only does politics of lies and people cannot accept it,” he said. BJP MP Parvesh Sahib Singh Verma said that after the“humiliating” defeat in the bypoll, Kejriwal should give his resignation on moral grounds as his party has been completely“rejected” by the people in this election.

“This is the beginning of the end of AAP government in Delhi,” Verma, an MP from West Delhi, said. Verma claimed that in the bypoll of Rajouri Garden, all sections of society, including in posh areas, JJ clusters, Muslims, Sikhs and Punjabis, have supported the BJP.

He claimed that BJP is fully confident of winning over 250 wards out of 272 in MCD polls. SAD (Badal) leader Manjinder Singh Sirsa, who contested the bypoll on BJP ticket and won the election with 14,652 votes, said this election is a referendum on the Kejriwal government’s performance.

“In this poll, AAP candidate has lost his deposit which indicates people are very angry with AAP government’s poor performance in Delhi.

“Arvind Kejriwal makes excuses not to work in Delhi despite the fact that people had given him a huge mandate in the Assembly polls,” Sirsa told reporters.

Sirsa said, “Kejriwal claims that Modi-led Centre doesn’t give him permission to work in Delhi, but I want to know whether he had sought permission for allotting office space to AAP, and paying fee of Rs 4 crore to a noted lawyer (in a defamation case against Kejriwal filed by Union Minister Arun Jaitley).”

Sirsa bagged 40,602 votes, over 50 per cent of the total votes polled, in a boost for the saffron party ahead of the April 23 municipal polls, handing a humiliating defeat to the ruling AAP which finished a distant third and even lost its deposit.With the victory, the BJP’s tally in the 70-member Delhi Assembly will become four.

The Congress does not have any presence in the House. Hitting out at DPCC President Ajay Maken’s claim that his party’s vote share has increased in the bypoll, Sirsa said that his party candidate bagged just 81 votes in a booth which was near Maken’s residence in the constituency.

Reacting to the bypoll result, Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar said “The bypoll result is a reflection of how AAP has disappointed the public in three years and how BJP’s performance has been upheld.“When they got the majority then EVMs were functioning well, now that they are losing they say the EVMs are tampered.  It doesn’t work like this”.