Delhi's Independents fail to make any impact in LS polls

New Delhi, May 18: Performance of most of the 57 Independent Lok Sabha candidates from Delhi was dismal with the exception of beauty queen Ruby Yadav from South Delhi and two namesakes of West Delhi's AAP candidate Jarnail Singh.

Most of them not only lost but even got lesser votes than the number of people who opted for 'None Of The Above'. A total of 39,368 people, i.e. 0.5 per cent of the total voters opted for NOTA during elections in the seven Lok Sabha seats.

The largest number of Independent candidates, 13 in total, were in fray from the prestigious New Delhi Lok Sabha seat where BJP's Meenakshi Lekhi defeated AAP candidate Ashish Khetan by a margin of 1,62,708 votes.

Among the Independents from there, Ravi Kumar got 20,028 votes followed by Rubina Khan with 1,260 votes. All the remaining 11 got votes in three figures.

The second highest number of Independent candidates was from South Delhi Parliamentary seat where 10 of them had filed nominations including blonde hair beauty Ruby Yadav who had won the 'Mrs India Queen' title in December last year.

She not only caught everyone's attention during her campaign but also bagged 56,749 votes to finish fourth with BJP's Ramesh Bidhuri on the top.

In Chandni Chowk constituency, as many as 8 Independent candidates including a namesake of AAP's candidate Ashutosh were in the fray.

While the real Ashutosh bagged 3,01,618 votes to finish second behind BJP's Harsh Vardhan, his namesake could only garner 4,504 votes. Another Independent Dildar Hussain Beg bagged 28,605 votes.

In North East Delhi constituency, where BJP candidate and Bhojpuri actor-singer Manoj Tiwari defeated Anand Kumar of AAP by a margin of 1,44,084 votes, there were eight Independent candidates in the poll ring but none of them could get a sizable chunk of votes.

The most interesting scenario cropped up in West Delhi seat, where AAP candidate Jarnail Singh alleged that two other candidates sharing his name had cost him the seat as their presence in the fray confused the voters.

Although Singh lost to BJP's Pravesh Verma by a margin of 2,68,586 votes, he claimed that the other two Jarnail Singhs -- who together bagged 90,682 votes -- queered the pitch for him.

A total of six Independent candidates were in the fray from the seat. In East Delhi and North West Delhi seats, there were six Independent candidates each in the poll arena but none of them could get more than some thousand votes.

PTI