New Delhi, May 24 (PTI): The Aam Aadmi Party won only one seat out of over 40 it contested across nine states and Union territories and it recorded its highest vote share in the national capital at 18.10 per cent.
The AAP had fielded candidates in Delhi, Chandigarh, Bihar, Goa, Punjab, Andaman and Nicobar, Haryana, Odisha and Uttar Pradesh. But only its candidate from Sangrur in Punjab, Bhagwant Mann, could win.
Mann won by a margin of over one lakh votes after beating Congress candidate Kewal Singh Dhillon.
In 2014, AAP had won four Lok Sabha seats in Punjab, and though it lost on all seats in Delhi, it came second on the seven constituencies.
This time in Delhi, AAP ranked third in most constituencies with an exception in South Delhi and North West Delhi where it ranked second.
The vote share of AAP in the nine states remained dismal.
In Delhi, it got 18.10 per cent which was the highest for the party. In UP, the party had 0.01 per cent vote share, 0.36 per cent vote share in Haryana, 7.38 per cent in Punjab, 3.02 per cent in Chandigarh, 0.06 per cent in Bihar, 1.37 per cent in Andaman and Nicobar, 3.01 per cent in Goa and 0.03 per cent in Odisha.
The most humiliating loss came to AAP from Delhi where the party was expecting to win at least four seats.
The AAP had fielded seven candidates in Delhi Brijesh Goyal from New Delhi, Pankaj Gupta from Chandni Chowk, Raghav Chadha from South Delhi, Atishi from East Delhi, Dilip Pandey from North East Delhi, Gugan Singh from North West Delhi and Balbir Singh Jakhad from West Delhi.
It lost to BJP on all the seven seats. Goyal lost by over four lakh votes to Meenakshi Lekhi, Gupta lost by over three lakh votes to Harsh Vardhan, Chadha lost by over three lakh votes to Ramesh Bidhuri and Atishi lost by over four lakh votes to Gautam Gambhir.
Pandey lost by over five lakh votes to Delhi BJP chief Manoj Tiwari, Singh lost by over six lakh to Hans Raj Hans and Jakhar lost by over six lakh votes to Parvesh Singh Verma.
Goyal, Gupta and Pandey even lost their deposit after getting fewer than one-sixth of the votes polled.
Atishi, credited by AAP for revolutionising the education system in Delhi government-run schools, came third after Gambhir and Congress candidate Arvinder Singh Lovely.
To introspect the loss, AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal will hold a meeting with state heads of the party in Punjabi Bagh on Sunday.
Analysts believe the performance of AAP, the ruling party in Delhi, in the Lok Sabha polls might impact its prospects in assembly polls early next year, but senior party leader Gopal Rai on Friday dismissed the suggestion and asserted there is no alternative to Kejriwal in the national capital.
Rai said the party lost because the elections were highly polarised and people voted either for Prime Minister Narendra Modi or Congress president Rahul Gandhi.
"We consider it our failure that we could not introduce the agenda of statehood (AAP's main poll plank) in the highly polarised elections," he said.
Riding high on the Modi wave, the BJP made a clean sweep in Delhi, winning all seven seats and all its candidates bagged more than 50 per cent of the votes polled, while the Congress for the first time in five years fared better than the AAP.
BJP's overall performance in the national capital, which witnessed a triangular contest, was miles ahead of its opponents.
The saffron party polled over 56 per cent of votes, more than the combined vote share of the Congress (22.50 per cent) and the AAP (18.10 per cent).
However, Rai exuded confidence that the result of Lok Sabha polls would not impact his party's prospects in 2020 assembly polls in Delhi.
The AAP had won 67 out of 70 seats in 2015 Delhi assembly elections. The BJP had won only 3 seats while the Congress had failed to open its account.
