Aam Aadmi Party leader and three-time MLA Somnath Bharti has lost his incumbent assembly seat of Malviya Nagar to Bharatiya Janata Party's Satish Upadhyay.
Bharti lost by a margin of around 2,100 votes, according to the Election Commission of India's data. He polled 37,433 votes, as against 39,564 secured by rival Upadhyay.
The Congress' Jitender Kumar Kochar is a distant third, having secured only 6,770 votes so far.
Upadhyay, the winning candidate, is presently the vice chairman of New Delhi Municipal Council. He is also the former president of the Delhi unit of the BJP. Under his leadership, the party had moved into the 2015 assembly elections, but faced a crushing defeat as the AAP had then secured 67 out of 70 seats.
The AAP, which replicated its dominating performance in 2020 elections with 62 seats, faced a defeat in this year's assembly polls. The party could win only 22 constituencies.
The BJP's tally jumped meteorically from eight seats in the last elections to 48 seats — well above the halfway majority-mark of 36 seats.
The 2025 Delhi assembly election was contested in the backdrop of the federal agencies' probe into the now-scrapped liquor policy of the AAP-led government. Senior party leaders who are accused in the case include former ministers Manish Sisodia and Satyendar Jain, and former chief minister and AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal.
The BJP's victory in the assembly polls ends its 27-year drought from power in the national capital. The saffron party had last ruled the government in Delhi in 1998.
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