New Delhi, Feb 8: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has not given hope of scraping through to majority in the 70-member Delhi Assembly, despite exit poll projections clearly favouring the AAP after voting ended on Saturday.
Officially, the BJP was “confident that it will win with clear majority on February 10, when the results will be declared, and form government,” Union minister Ananth Kumar told reporters late on Saturday night.
Full responsibilty: Bedi
The party’s chief ministerial candidate Kiran Bedi said she elsewhere that would “take full responsibility of the results”.
A senior BJP leader said the best outcome would be 36-37 seats.
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), however, is keeping its fingers crossed as its internal assessment on the BJP’s prospects, done on Friday evening, gave the party merely 35 seats, while 31 went to the AAP, and two to the Congress.
The Sangh Parivar, sources said, was “uncertain” on two seats as they could not arrive at a definite conclusion about vote swing there.
One of them was Badarpur, whose results have differed from Delhi's mood since its inception in 1993, except for last time, when the BJP’s Ram Vir Singh Bidhuri won.
Unlike the stock-taking meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi called at his office-cum-residence at 7 RCR, which was attended among others by party chief Amit Shah and senior Cabinet ministers, the RSS had not slotted any get-together after the polls on Saturday evening, said Sangh sources.
In the meeting Modi chaired, the fierce battle the BJP fought against the AAP, pitching it as governance versus anarchy, was discussed.
Party sources said that they were still hoping to do well given due to the large turnout, as it meant even the reluctant middle class and the elite had come out to exercise their franchise.
Having been out of power for 16 years, the BJP was eyeing 13 key seats where the victory margin was less than 1,000-2,000 votes, including RK Puram, Mustafabad, Madipur, Rajinder Nagar, Karol Bagh and Rohini.
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