The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won 14 of the 20 Purvanchali-dominated seats as it returns to power in Delhi after 27 years. Purvanchalis, the migrants from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh estimated to account for nearly two-thirds of the voters in the national Capital, backed the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the last two elections. However, this time, there was a growing disillusionment among the Purvanchali voters with the AAP.
Of the 20 Purvanchal-majority seats, BJP’s Pradyumn Singh Rajput won the Dwarka constituency by 7829 votes by defeating AAP leader Vinay Mishra.
In Laxmi Nagar, Abhay Verma won by 11542 votes and Kapil Mishra in Karawal Nagar by 23,352 votes.
Satish Upadhyay secured Malviya Nagar by 5,652 votes, Ravinder Singh Negi by a landslide margin of 28072 in Patparganj by defeating Awadh Ojha.
Umang Bajaj by 1231 votes in Rajinder Nagar. Jitender Mahajan won by 27902 votes, which is a huge number in Rohtas Nagar constituency. Chandan Kumar Choudhary narrowly secured Sangam Vihar with a margin of 344.
Rekha Gupta in Shalimar Bagh won by 29455 votes. Pankaj Kumar Singh won by a margin of 13875 votes in Vikas Puri.
Model Town was also secured by the BJP candidate Ashok Goal by a comfortable margin of 13415 votes.
In Adarsh Nagar, Raj Kumar Bhatia defeated Mukesh Kumar Goel by a comfortable margin of 11482 votes. Poonam Sharma of BJP defeated Rajesh Gupta of AAP by 11425 votes.
Palam seat was won by Kuldeep Solanki by 8952 and defeated by AAP leader Joginder Solanki.
The AAP appeared to retain sway in only six Purvanchali-dominated seats, with Gopal Rai winning the Babarpur seat by 18994 votes, defeating BJP leader Anil Kumar Vashisht. Sanjeev Jha won the Burari seat with a margin of 20529 votes. Anil Jha secured Kirari’s seat by a margin of 21871 and Akhilesh Pati Tripathi by 2771 votes in Model Town. Shahi Ram secured the Tughlakabad constituency for AAP with a margin of 14711 votes. The other two constituencies that AAP won in the Purvanchali-dominated areas are Kondli and Gokalpur. There AAP leaders Kuldeep Kumar and Surendra Kumar defeated Priyanka Gautama and Praveen Nimesh by margins of 6293 and 8207 votes, respectively.
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Leaders from Purvanchal such as UP CM Yogi Aditya Nath, Gorakhpur MP Ravi Kishan and Ex-BJP chief Manoj Tiwari did extensive campaigning in these areas to carter votes and the results clearly show that they gained success in winning the trust of votes from the Purvanchali-dominated constituencies.
According to data from the last three census, the proportion of migrants from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh (including Uttarakhand and Jharkhand for consistency with the 1991 census) has increased from one-fifth to one-fourth of Delhi’s population. However, not all Uttar Pradesh migrants may be classified as Purvanchali. The census does not provide district-level mapping of migrantion.
According to the 2016-17 Economic Survey, the top two state-specific migrant export-import routes were Uttar Pradesh to Delhi and Bihar to Delhi. Eight of the top 30 routes linking the country’s migrant exporting and importing districts ran from Purvanchal to Delhi. The rise of the Purvanchali vote bank has yet to reach its apex.