Cong. retains Delhi seats

NEW DELHI: Congress party retained both the assembly seats of Rajouri Garden and Baljeet Nagar on Saturday. Congress’ Rajesh Lilothia defeated his nearest rival, Raj Mehra (BJP) from Baljeet Nagar, while Ramesh Lamba (Congress) overcame BJP’s Ramesh Khanna in Rajouri Garden seat in the assembly bypolls.
Lilothia bagged 21,480 votes as against Mehra’s 14,768, winning by a margin of 6,712 votes.The constituency was earlier represented by Krishna Tirath, who won the seat thrice. "Besides development, people also want their problems to be acknowledged. The fact that people have chosen Congress shows their sentiment," Lilothia said.
On the other hand, Lamba, backed by Ajay Maken, bagged 19,193 votes, winning by a margin of 3,649. "My agenda is to take forward the development initiated by Maken," he said after winning the seat.
Both winners visited Congress president Sonia Gandhi and also met CM Sheila Dikshit on Saturday.
Lamba’s constituency was earlier represented by Ajay Maken, who was elected for three consecutive terms in 1993, 1998 and 2003. There were a total of 11 contestants in the fray. Before this, the polling on Wednesday had been characterised by a low turnout. Even the campaigning proved lacklustre with candidates failing to attract people to their poll meetings. Poll observers attributed this to the fact that people has already seen two major elections in less than an year’s time.
In Rajouri Garden, Punjabi Khatris are the dominant community followed by SCs and Brahmins. On the other hand, the Baljeet Nagar constituency, reserved for scheduled castes has been a Congress stronghold. Due to the presence of traditional Congress voters belonging to the socially and economically weaker sections of society, the party has never lost an election in the past one decade. Krishna Tirath, MP from Karol Bagh, represented the seat for three consecutive terms since 1993.