Several heavyweight Cong, BJP leaders bite dust in Delhi polls

As the tables turned on the Congress in the Delhi polls, several heavyweights including three-time chief minister Sheila Dikshit, four-time member of Legislative Assembly A K Walia and senior Delhi Bharatiya Janata Party leader Vijender Gupta failed to save their seats.

Dikshit and Gupta lost to a debutante Arvind Kejriwal at New Delhi seat.

Kejriwal won the high-profile New Delhi constituency defeating Dikshit by more than 25,000 votes while Vijender Gupta had to contend with the third place. While Kejriwal got 44,269 votes, Dikshit fetched 18,405 and Gupta finished with 17,952.

One of the prominent losers in these elections was Kiran Walia, who was the education minister in Dikshit's cabinet. Walia finished a humiliating third in the Malviya Nagar

constituency. The seat was won by Somnath Bharti of the Aam Admi Party with 32,258 votes. Walia could only manage 20,500 votes while Arti Mehra, who finished the runner up, garnered 24,486 votes.

Health and Family Minister A K Walia too had a similar fate. He lost to Vinod Kumar Binny of the AAP from Laxmi Nagar seat by around 8,000 votes where the BJP finished third.

Another Congress veteran to fall in this wave of the AAP was four-time MLA and PWD minister Rajkumar Chouhan. He lost to 26-year-old Rakhi Birla by 10,585 votes while BJP's Ram Kishor Navariya finished third.

Transport Minister Ramakant Goswami also finished third from Rajinder Nagar constituency which was won by R P Singh of the BJP. He defeated Virender Garg Vyas of AAP by 1,796 votes.

It was just two of Dikshit's ministers, Urban Development Minister Arvinder Singh Lovely and Food and Supplies Minister Haroon Yusuf who could save their forts amid the Congress rout.

Lovely managed to defeat BJP's Ramesh Chand Jain by nearly 16,000 votes in the Gandhi Nagar constituency while Yusuf won the Ballimaran seat by 8,093 votes defeating BJP's Moti Lal Sodhi. Lovely was trailing at one point of time but managed to fill the gap at a later stage.

Yusuf too had his share of scare as he trailed in the first six rounds but made up to the loss in the next sessions of counting.