5 out of 11 Sikh faces victorious in Delhi assembly elections

In a better-than-expected performance, five out of the 11 Sikh faces who fought the Delhi assembly elections emerged victorious.

In the 2020 elections also 11 Sikhs had contested, out of which two – both belonging to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) -- had won. Then, SAD an alliance partner of the BJP had backed out of the polls at the last moment protesting against the Citizens Amendment Act passed by the BJP government.

Surprisingly, all three Sikh candidates fielded by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) this time -- Manjinder Singh Sirsa from Rajouri Garden, Arvinder Singh Lovely from Gandhi Nagar and Tarvinder Singh Marwah from Jungpur seat -- have won.

Sirsa, a two-former MLA, who also served as the president of the Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee (DSGMC), defeated his nearest rival by a margin of over 18,000 votes. He had joined the saffron party in December 2021, and is expected to get an important position in the government.

Lovely, who was an education minister during the Congress regime, had joined the BJP in 2017, and won by a margin of nearly 13,000 votes this time.

Marwah defeated former deputy minister Manish Sisodia by 675 votes. Sisodia had won three elections -- 2013, 2015 and 2020.

The AAP had fielded four Sikhs, out of which two won. They include Jarnail Singh from Tilak Nagar who won by a margin of 11,656 votes and Punardeep Singh Sawhney who won from Chandni Chowk by 16,500 votes. Jarnail defeated another Sikh face, PS Bawa fielded by the Congress. This is Jarnail’s fourth consecutive victory, he had previously won on AAP ticket in 2013, 2015 and 2020. He had also served as the in-charge of AAP’s Punjab unit ahead of the 2022 state assembly elections.

Two other Sikh candidates fielded by the AAP, Jatinder Singh Shanty from Shahdara and Surinder Pal Singh Bittu from Timarpur, were defeated.

Shanty, who in the past was elected as an MLA on a BJP ticket, failed to get benefit as a corona warrior for his work during the pandemic.

All four candidates fielded by the Congress -- PS Bawa from Tilak Nagar, Rajinder Singh Namdhari from Moti Nagar, Gurcharan Singh from Krishna Nagar and Harbani Kaur from Janakpuri, were defeated.

Sikhs constitute only 5% of Delhi’s population of over 2 crores but still exercise considerable influence on the Capital politics. There are about 8 lakh Sikh voters in Delhi with their concentration varying across the 70 constituencies between 4,000 to 40,000, except for Rajouri Garden and Tilak Nagar, where it peaks at around 55,000, giving them a decisive edge.

In the 2020 elections, BJP, had fielded three Sikhs candidates at Rajinder Nagar, Jangpura and Timarpur. Congress had fielded six Sikhs candidates at Gandhi Nagar, Jangpura, Deoli, Rajouri Garden, Vishvash Nagar, and Tilak Nagar, while AAP had fielded two candidates from Tilak Nagar and Chandni Chowk.

On Saturday’s victory, former Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) president Sukhbir Singh Badal said, “People of Delhi have defeated the party of the untruthful who had done much damage in New Delhi and are doing the same in Punjab, running the government via a remote control.” Speaking to media persons in Mohali, he said that he hoped that the people of Punjab would also show them the door.