Working "relentlessly" for the poor and homeless in their constituencies helped them hold fast in the AAP tsunami which decimated their BJP and reduced the Congress to a nought, said the three BJP winners.Vijender Gupta, Jagdish Pradhan and Om Prakash Gupta registered comprehensive victories in a cracker of an election that saw the annihilation of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that bagged just three of the 70 assembly seats while the Congress failed to open its account.On the other hand, the Aam Aadmi Party's (AAP) made a stunning comeback bagging 67 seats.Gupta, a former BJP state president, who won from Rohini by defeating AAP's C.L. Gupta by around 5,000 votes told IANS that he has been working in Rohini since 1997 and his hard work has paid-off."I have worked for the poor and homeless in my constituency since I became the municipal councillor in 1997 for the first time," the 51-year-old leader who was also the vice-president of the Delhi University Students Union (DUSU) told IANS.
Rohini is considered to be a bastion of Gupta who had won as councillor thrice before contesting the assembly polls for the first time in 2013 from the New Delhi seat against the then Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit and AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal.Though, Gupta has lost from New Delhi, this time he returned to his citadel of Rohini and won.Meanwhile, Pradhan who beat sitting legislator Hassan Ahmed of the Congress from Mustafabad by over 5,000 votes too claimed that it was his welfare policies for the poor that worked for him."I know the pulse of this constituency and each and every resident here knows me and my work. This is why I have won. It is a proof of the work that I have done," Pradhan told IANS.
Just like his counterpart Gupta, 59-year-old Pradhan too became a municipal councillor in 1997, although he represented the Congress back then. The legislator was with the Congress for 15 years before switching to BJP in 2008. He fought the 2013 assembly election from the same seat on a BJP ticket but was defeated by 1,800 votes. This time he won.In Vishwas Nagar assembly seat, Sharma of the BJP defeated AAP's Atul Gupta by over 11,000 votes.