Congress improves vote share in Bawana bypoll

New Delhi, Aug 28 (IANS) The Congress put up a credible performance in the Bawana Assembly bypoll by increasing its vote share even as both ruling AAP and BJP polled less votes compared to their performance in 2015 elections.

The Congress party saw the verdict as a clear signal of its revival in Delhi, which it had successively ruled for 15 years till 2013.

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) retained the Bawana seat, one of the 12 reserved seats in the 70-member assembly, by over 24,000 votes, with its candidate Ram Chandra defeating former party legislator Ved Prakash, who joined the Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) after resigning his assembly membership.

Ram Chandra got 59,886 votes against 35,834 votes of Ved Prakash. Congress candidate Surender Kumar bagged 31,919 votes.

The AAP candidate received 45.39 per cent of the total votes cast, while the BJP and Congress candidates got 27.16 and 24.19 per cent, respectively.

The Congress had got only 7.87 per cent votes in the 2015 assembly polls. The vote share of both AAP and BJP came down -- the BJP had got 31.40 per cent votes in 2015, while the AAP had polled 57.9 per cent.

Delhi Congress chief Ajay Maken said after the results that party's revival process "may be hard but not impossible!"

"@INCIndia workers worked hard to jump from 7.8 to 25%. We led till 11th round. Both AAP & BJP considerably lost vote share," Maken said in a tweet.

A reason for the credible performance of Congress in Bawana was personal popularity of its candidate Surender Kumar, who has been a three-time MLA.

The Congress had also put up a fairly good performance in the bypoll to the Rajouri assembly seat earlier this year by finishing second behind the BJP. The party had got 25,950 votes compared to 40,602 cornered by the BJP.

In the municipal elections held in April, the Congress had finished third.