The Congress swept the Lok Sabha elections in Delhi, with the party pocketing all seven seats in the city-state. Saturday’s results, after the convincing victory in last November’s Assembly elections, have as good as made the Capital a Congress fortress.

The margin for the Congress was the highest in East Delhi where Chief Minister’s son and sitting MP Sandeep Dikshit defeated BJP rival Chetan Chauhan by 2,41,053 votes.

In North-East Delhi Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee president J. P. Agarwal, not only won the seat by the second highest margin of 2,22,243 votes.

In Chandni Chowk Union Minister Kapil Sibal of the Congress defeated his BJP rival and municipal councillor Vijender Gupta by 2,00,710 votes.

Union Minister of State and Congress candidate from New Delhi Ajay Maken who was pitted against BJP candidate and party national general secretary Vijay Goel posted a huge win by 1,87,809 votes.

Krishna Tirath won from the North-West Delhi reserved constituency by an almost similar margin of 1,84,433 votes defeating her BJP rival and former Delhi Mayor Meera Kanwaria.

Mahabal Mishra of the Congress, who was considered by many to be the weakest candidate of the seven, also proved his critics wrong by defeating senior BJP leader Jagdish Mukhi by a margin of 1,29,010 votes in West Delhi.

Finally in South Delhi, where like North-East Delhi the Congress replaced its candidate Sajjan Kumar with his brother Ramesh Kumar, the change did not affect the party’s fortune. And Mr. Ramesh Kumar  defeated his BJP rival Ramesh Bidhuri by 93,000 votes .

A three-tier security system and nearly 2,000 police personnel will be in place in the national capital to avoid any untoward incident on counting day May 16.

A three-layered security cover is thrown around seven counting centres in the national capital where 100 police personnel at each site have been positioned in addition to Quick Reaction Teams.

According to the office of the Delhi chief electoral officer, 5,000 officials will be involved in the entire counting process in eight counting centres on the day. Except for the East Delhi constituency which will have two counting centres, the rest of the six constituencies will have one counting centre each.

“The counting process will begin at 8 a.m. with the counting of the postal ballots first,” the official said.

According to the officials, the number of electronic voting machines (EVMs) used for the May 7 poll process here were 12,132 control units and 19,578 balloting units in 11,348 polling booths. Around 53 percent of the 11.09 million electorate in Delhi came out to vote this time. The polling process took place across seven constituencies.

BJP is going to win atleast three seats in Delhi general Elections 2009.Astrologer Jitender Kumar has predicted that BJP and congress will get 3 and 4 seats respectively. Jitender Kumar was not having much information about the birth details of candidates so he has done his calculation based on his unique method of prediction.

Here are the predictions about Delhi seats

Jitender Kumar is a practising astrolger and you can contact him at :
Mobile No. : 9811312189, 9999602078, 9810332241
E-mail : jituastro@yahoo.com

A total of 851 of the capital’s residents braved the odds and exercised the 49 (O) option in general elections. The highest number was from the posh New Delhi constituency, where 178 voters registered their protest and asserted that no candidate contesting from the area was worthy of their votes.

Figures compiled by the Election Commission reveal that after New Delhi, a close second was West Delhi where 164 voters exercised the option followed by East, Chandni Chowk, North-West, South and North-East Delhi constituencies where the numbers stood at 153, 130, 130, 50 and 46 respectively.

The election campaign will come to an end on Tuesday at 5 p.m. in more places, ahead of Thursday’s Phase IV polling in 85 Lok Sabha constituencies in seven States and the National Capital Territory of Delhi. Political canvassing is at its peak, as less than 24 hours are left for the end of public campaign. One of the most important state that will go to polls on Thursday, is National Capital Delhi. Polling will be held in all seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi on May 7. The main battle will be between arch-rivals Congress and BJP. However, BSP may play a crucial role in some of the seats.

Union Ministers Kapil Sibal (Chandni Chowk), Ajay Maken (New Delhi) and Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee president J.P. Agarwal (North-East Delhi) and Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit’s son Sandeep Dikshit (East Delhi) are in the ring. Mr. Ajay Maken’s (Congress) rival in the BJP is the former Union Minister, Vijay Goel.

In Delhi, BJP has been able to hold some advantage over the Congress, riding high on the personality of its Prime Ministerial candidate LK Advani, issue of terrorism, price rise, black money in Swiss Banks and confusion among the UPA allies. However, it is to be seen if the party can convert those responses into votes.

In an interesting development, BSP candidate Haji Dilshad has withdrawn his nomination in favour of the Congress candidate JP Aggarwal from North East Delhi. He has decided to campaign for the Congress candidate.

More Information about India Elections

Around 220 polling stations in the national capital have been identified as “sensitive” and “highly-sensitive” by Delhi Police.
Police have identified around 30 highly-sensitive stations in the city, with the majority falling in east Delhi, north-east Delhi and Chandni Chowk constituencies, a senior police officer said on Sunday.

These three constituencies together have 17 polling stations
in the highly-sensitive categories, where security personnel will be deployed in abundance.

This is a decrease from Delhi assembly elections held in November last year when police had identified 40 hyper-sensitive and 226 sensitive polling booths.

Steps are also being taken to ensure peaceful polling on May 7, which include sealing of borders two days prior to the voting.

More Information about India Elections

Kapil Sibal,  Monday took a break from car rides and instead chose to campaign on the soleckshaw – a different kind of rickshaw .

Kicking off his campaign, Sibal took the driver’s seat and rode the rickshaw for a few minutes before taking the passenger’s seat and campaigning through the narrow lanes of Chandni Chowk for nearly an hour.

Partly solar battery operated, the soleckshaw is an eco-friendly vehicle that not only brings down the carbon footprint but also reduces the burden on the driver.

Although launched last year on Oct 2, there are just four soleckshaws in use – all of which were used by Sibal in the campaign trail in the Pili Kothi SPM Marg near the Novelty cinema in Chandni Chowk.

Better versions of the rickshaw with higher speed and ergonomics are expected to be launched in the capital by 2010, before the Commonwealth games.

More Information about India Elections

On the last date of withdrawal of nomination for the Lok Sabha polls, the office of the chief electoral officer (CEO) was left with 160 candidates out of 166. Now, the office of the CEO will begin scrutiny of applications
and notify the final list of candidates.

Of the 160 candidates, 41 are from Chandni Chowk, and 40 from New Delhi. While East Delhi has 17 candidates, North-East and North-West have 16 each and West Delhi and South have 15 each.

With the filing of nomination papers coming to a close on Saturday, a total of 228 candidates are in the fray for the May 7 Lok Sabha polls in Delhi and 11 candidates will contest the Rohtas Nagar Assembly byelection.

The highest number of nominations – 56 – are from New Delhi seat and the lowest – 22 each – are from Northwest Delhi and South Delhi, a statement from the poll panel said.

Chandni Chowk has 45 candidates. Northeast Delhi, East Delhi and West Delhi have 30, 27 and 26 respectively.

The nomination process that started April 11 culminated Saturday. The numbers may still change, as the last day for withdrawal of candidature is April 22.

Congress candidate from Chandni chowk, Kapil Sibal has increased his assets by nearly Rs eight crore in the last five years, which have now touched a whopping Rs 23.91 crore.

The senior Congress leader, who is contesting from Chandni Chowk constituency in the national capital, on Thursday filed his nomination and submitted the affidavit detailing his movable and immovable assets.

His total assets, including cash, agricultural and non- agricultural plots, houses, bonds, debentures and shares are worth Rs 23.91 crore, as compared to Rs 16.34 crore he had declared during the 2004 general elections.

The lawyer-turned-politician has a fleet of luxury cars — a Toyota Corolla, a Hyundai Sonata, an Optra Chevrolet, a Suzuki Jeep and a Reva electric car, besides an Enfield Bullet motorcycle.

Sibal’s wife Promila has assets worth Rs 8.09 crore, including ornaments worth Rs 28.65 lakh and Rs 30 lakh in bank deposits and investments. Kapil Sibal himself has deposits, bank investments and debentures worth Rs 90 lakh.