Delhi Election Results 2025 EXPLAINER: BJP Wins 48 Seats, AAP’s Kejriwal Loses New Delhi Constituency, and More.

New Delhi was that one feather which had eluded Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cap for 10 years. Modi led the BJP to a huge victory in the 2014 Lok Sabha election, but just months later, the saffron party, led by him, lost to the AAP, then a political newbie, in the 2015 Assembly election in the national capital. A similar story unfolded in the State election in 2020. These defeats are believed to have rankled Modi. But with its comprehensive victory in the 2025 Assembly election, the BJP has finally broken its 27-year streak of defeat.

On the other hand, the AAP, which emerged as the fastest-growing political party over the past 12 years, has lost its citadel where it came up with its much-publicised Delhi model of governance and which was its launchpad into national politics. The defeat of the AAP and former Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s own loss in the New Delhi seat is a huge moral defeat for the party’s national convenor since he had turned the Assembly election into a referendum on his leadership.

The BJP has recorded an emphatic victory, winning 48 out of 70 seats in the Vidhan Sabha. The AAP has been reduced to 22 seats. In 2020, the AAP won 62 seats and the BJP 8, and in the 2015 election, the AAP won a massive mandate of 67 seats and the BJP, just 3. In this election, which saw a direct fight between the BJP and the AAP, the Congress continued to be on the fringes, failing to win a single seat just like in the 2015 and 2020 elections.

It was quite telling that many AAP bigwigs were vanquished, including former Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia and Satyendar Jain and Saurabh Bharadwaj, who were Ministers in the outgoing Cabinet. Among the few prominent AAP leaders who managed to win are Chief Minister Atishi and her Cabinet colleagues Gopal Rai and Imran Hussain.

Also Read | AAP faces existential crisis as liquor scam clouds its anti-corruption image

The BJP got 45.56 per cent of the votes, a sizeable jump from 38.5 per cent in 2020. The AAP’s vote share dropped from 53.6 per cent in 2020 to 43.57 per cent this time. The Congress only marginally improved its vote percentage from 4.26 per cent in 2020 to 6.34 per cent.

The AAP’s vote share dropped from 53.6 per cent in 2020 to 43.57 per cent this time. Here, the AAP office wears a deserted look in New Delhi, on February 8.
| Photo Credit:
MANISH SWARUP/AP

Delhi is not even a full State, but the victory means a lot to the BJP. Modi declared triumphantly at the BJP headquarters: “The people of Delhi have freed the capital of a decade of ‘AAP-da’ [disaster]. The people’s mandate to the BJP is for development, vision, and trust.” It had been frustrating for the party to win in the general election but not in Delhi as Kejriwal and his party proved to be a big hurdle. The people of Delhi had over the past 10 years voted overwhelmingly in favour of the BJP in Lok Sabha elections, with Modi’s leadership being a big deciding factor for them. However, in the Assembly election, they reposed their faith in Kejriwal and the AAP.

Sensing that this was its best chance to win Delhi, the BJP banked on anti-incumbency against the AAP government, and its main target was Kejriwal’s image against the backdrop of the allegations of corruption against him and the “Sheesh Mahal” claims. BJP leaders said they ensured that Kejriwal could not use the term “kattar imaandaar” (staunchly honest) ever again. The party focussed on local issues such as the condition of roads, deficiencies in sanitation services, air pollution, and the failure to clean the Yamuna river. The party reworked its stand on the AAP government’s welfare schemes, which it had earlier described as “freebies”. It went out of its way to assure Delhi voters that none of the existing welfare measures would be rolled back.

What is believed to have turned the election decisively in the BJP’s favour is the support of the middle class. In the 2015 election and to a large extent in 2020 too, the middle class backed the AAP despite voting for the BJP in the Lok Sabha election. Kejriwal, when he switched from activism to politics, was a hero of the middle class as he walked in with the promise to rid the political system of corruption. That image took a beating in the run-up to the 2025 election.

“The BJP highlighted the non-performance of the AAP government and the corruption that its leaders allegedly indulged in. The image of the AAP as a kattar imaandaar party took a beating and Kejriwal’s personal defeat only accentuated it,” said the political analyst Harjeshwar Pal Singh.

Among the few prominent AAP leaders who managed to win are Chief Minister Atishi and her Cabinet colleagues Gopal Rai and Imran Hussain. Here, Atishi arrives at Kejriwal’s residence on February 8.
| Photo Credit:
Arun Sharma/PTI

And the BJP continued to woo middle-class voters and marketed the income tax concessions announced in the Union Budget as a gift to the people of Delhi. Modi too highlighted the reworked income tax rates in his election speeches.

“I feel the election scenario changed on February 1, when the Union Budget was presented. The tax concessions for the salaried class had a big impact. Before that, there was the announcement of the Eighth Pay Commission, which benefits those who are in government jobs as also the pensioners, and they are present in sizeable numbers in the capital,” said Abhay Kumar Dubey, professor at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies.

Kejriwal did not waste time in conceding defeat on the results day. The former Chief Minister, looking visibly dejected, said in a video message that he hoped the expectations with which the people had voted for the BJP would be fulfilled. “In the 10 years that the people of Delhi gave us, we did a lot of work for them in education, healthcare, water, electricity, and we tried to provide them with relief in various ways and improve the infrastructure of Delhi…. We will play the role of a constructive opposition and do social service. We will do whatever is needed to provide succour to people,” he said.

AAP leaders said it was an extremely difficult election, and they were not even in the reckoning a few months back. The most important issue to tackle, according to them, was 10 years of anti-incumbency and growing discontent on the ground. The developments in the past two and a half years, which include legal amendments and imprisonment of its top leadership, including Kejriwal and Sisodia, had pushed the party into a corner, they said.

According to a top AAP leader, when Kejriwal stepped out of jail in September 2024 after he was granted bail in the excise policy case by the Supreme Court, the party was down and out in the capital. If elections had been held then, it would have won just about 10 seats. It was under these circumstances that the party regrouped and fought the election.

Dubey said the Delhi verdict has to be seen against the backdrop of the immense pressure under which the AAP government worked over the past two years. “For the BJP, Delhi was like a laboratory in which it used every means, including Central agencies, to mount pressure on the AAP. Legal amendments ensured that the Delhi government had no authority over its officers. A new Lieutenant Governor was appointed after which the friction between the BJP-ruled Centre and the AAP government only worsened. This gave rise to a feeling, especially among the middle class, that if the AAP wins again, the BJP will not allow it to work,” he said.

The AAP’s vote percentage showed that while the middle class moved away from the party in this election, it has still managed to hold on to a substantial chunk of its core support base, which comprises the poor sections of society that have benefited from the AAP government’s welfare schemes over the past 10 years. The AAP’s 43.57 per cent vote share and the fact that there is just about a 2 per cent vote difference between the party and the BJP indicate that it still has a sizeable support base in Delhi and continues to be a force to reckon with.

Also Read | The AAP ‘anomaly’

On whether an alliance with the Congress could have made a difference to the electoral outcome, since the party’s votes were more than the winning margin of the BJP over the AAP in many seats, Dubey said that would be a simplistic reading of the situation. “It is not necessary that the votes the Congress got would have transferred to the AAP. Many of these votes were in any case anti-AAP votes,” he said.

The AAP now faces the challenge of holding on to its leaders and workers in Delhi. Also, there would be ramifications for its government in Punjab, the only State where the AAP is in power now.

“AAP’s defeat in Delhi is likely to increase the difficulties for the party as its internal cohesion could come under strain and the leadership of Kejriwal can be questioned, with a vengeful BJP breathing down its neck,” said Harjeshwar Pal Singh. He further said tensions could increase between the Delhi leadership and the Punjab unit. “There is every likelihood that Kejriwal, who has been unaccustomed to loss of power, will try to seek the relative safety as well as command of Punjab, which would lead to a renewed tug of war between him and Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann.”

While on one hand Delhi has given Modi the personal satisfaction of winning the national capital after 10 years in power at the Centre, on the other, it has stripped Kejriwal of his moral authority and left his party staring at an uncertain future.