Delhi Assembly Polls: Congress Footprint Shrinks in 6 Muslim-dominated Seats, Bags Fewer than 45K Votes

New Delhi: In six Muslim-dominated assembly seats of Delhi, the Congress bagged less than 45,000 votes polled together, in contrast to the Lok Sabha polls when it did significantly well seven months ago.

In five of the six seats -- Ballimaran, Okhla, Matia Mahal, Babarpur, Mustafabad -- the Congress bagged a little more than 5,000 votes in each constituency.

The only saving grace for the party was Seelampur where it garnered more than 20,000 votes.

These were also the seats which were once the bastions of the Congress represented by party stalwarts.

The Congress drew a blank for second time in a row and its vote share also reached an all-time low of 4 per cent in the assembly polls.

The Congress' decline in the national capital indicated that the Muslim community has shifted to the Aam Aadmi Party.

Take for instance, Congress's Haroon Yusuf, a minister in the former Sheila Dikshit government, who bagged only 5,107 votes in Ballimaran against his AAP rival who garnered 65,612 votes.

In the neighbouring Matia Mahal seat, Congress' Mirza Javed Ali got merely 3,403 votes as against 67,250 votes bagged by AAP's Shoaib Iqbal.

In the Lok Sabha polls, the party had bagged 52,669 votes from Matia Mahal and 49,036 from the Ballimaran assembly segments. The seats fall under the Chandni Chowk parliamentary constituency.

In Seelampur, Mateen Ahmed of Congress bagged 20,207 votes. However, it was much lesser than his AAP rival Abdul Rehman who secured 72,611 votes.

In Babarpur and Mustafabad, the Congress candidates got 5,131 and 5,363 votes, respectively.

In the Lok Sabha polls, the then Delhi Congress president and party candidate Sheila Dikshit had secured the highest number of votes in Seelampur (64,382) assembly segment. She was polled 57,227 votes in Babarpur and 69,803 votes in Mustafabad.

AAP's Lok Sabha candidate from Northeast Delhi Dilip Pandey had bagged 17,803 votes (Mustafabad), 12,564 votes (Babarpur) and 10,091 votes (Seelampur).

On the Okhla seat, AAP MLA Amanatullah Khan bettered his 2015 performance and won by over 71,000 votes. His Congress rival Parvez Hashmi, a former Rajya Sabha MP and a four-time MLA, managed to get only 5,107 votes.

In the Lok Sabha polls, Congress' Arvinder Singh Lovely got over 60,000 votes from the Okhla segment as against 43,000 by AAP's Atishi.