Delhi Election Results: BJP Gains Among Dalit Voters, Wrests 6 Seats from AAP

In this Delhi election, tall Dalit leaders from the Aam Aadmi Party as well as Congress have faced a poll drubbing.

Aakriti Handa

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has swept away the Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party in the 2025 Delhi Assembly Elections by winning 48 of the 70 Assembly seats, has achieved another feat. 

The party has managed to gain foothold among Delhi’s Dalit voters—wresting six out of 16 seats, where the Scheduled Caste (SC) community has a significant population. Dalits account for 16.5 percent of Delhi’s population as per the 2011 census, making it the second biggest voting bloc after Upper Castes taken as a consolidated category.

Dalits in Delhi have traditionally pulled their weight behind the Congress (from 1993-2008) and then the Aam Aadmi Party (2013 to 2020) as far as Assembly elections are concerned. Even when the BJP won Delhi in 1993, it lost Dalit concentration seats like Sultanpur Majra, Mangolpuri, Trilokpuri and Ambedkar Nagar.

However this election, tall Dalit leaders from the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) as well as Congress have faced a poll drubbing. 

For instance, AAP candidate Rakhi Birla — a sitting MLA from Mangol Puri — lost from Madipur constituency to BJP candidate Kailash Gangwal by a margin of nearly 10,900 votes. Similarly, senior Congress leader Rajesh Lilothia lost from Seema Puri and only secured the third spot. But, in Karol Bagh BJP’s Dushyant Gautam was defeated by AAP’s sitting MLA Vishesh Ravi.

Where BJP Gained and AAP Lost

In Delhi, there are 12 seats reserved for candidates belonging to SC communities. In the 2020 Assembly elections, all these seats were won by AAP. This time, however, the BJP has wrested four – three of them have over 25 percent Dalit population – of these 12 reserved seats. Besides, it has won two seats, Rajinder Nagar and Wazirpur, with over 20 percent Dalit population.

This is significant as the BJP, for the first time, has been able to make inroads among Dalit voters during Assembly elections. In the past two elections, the party had succeeded in winning over Dalits at the Lok Sabha election level but it has somehow failed to do so at the Assembly level.

If results from the 2024 Haryana elections are an indicator, BJP was able to garner Dalit votes in the state due to the sub-classification issue and increased divisions between the predominant Jatav/Chamar Dalits (better off in terms of access to education and government jobs) and smaller communities among SCs.  

This could have led to gains for the BJP in Delhi too, where Jatav/Chamar Dalits account for 38 percent of the total Dalit population. This is followed by Balmikis at 21 percent, and Khatiks, Kolis and Dhobis are about 6-7 percent each.

Among the Dalit seats won by BJP in Delhi, three seats—Mangol Puri, Bawana, Wazirpur—come under North West Delhi, which have a higher Chamar population (37%) as compared to Balmiki population (21%).

Similarly, Madipur falls under West Delhi, which has a higher Chamar population (35%) over Balmiki population (17%).

The only anomaly here is Rajinder Nagar falling under New Delhi, where there are more Balmiki population (48%) over Chamar population (15%).

Meanwhile, Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) has reduced its vote share from 0.7 percent in 2020 to 0.58 percent in 2025.

Courtesy : The Quint

Note: This news is originally published in thequint.com and was used solely for non-profit/non-commercial purposes exclusively for Human Rights