The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has swept away the Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party in the 2025 Delhi Assembly Elections by winning 48 of the 70 Assembly seats, has achieved another feat.
The party has managed to gain foothold among Delhi’s Dalit voters—wresting six out of 16 seats, where the Scheduled Caste (SC) community has a significant population. Dalits account for 16.5 percent of Delhi's population as per the 2011 census, making it the second biggest voting bloc after Upper Castes taken as a consolidated category.
Dalits in Delhi have traditionally pulled their weight behind the Congress (from 1993-2008) and then the Aam Aadmi Party (2013 to 2020) as far as Assembly elections are concerned. Even when the BJP won Delhi in 1993, it lost Dalit concentration seats like Sultanpur Majra, Mangolpuri, Trilokpuri and Ambedkar Nagar.
However this election, tall Dalit leaders from the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) as well as Congress have faced a poll drubbing.
For instance, AAP candidate Rakhi Birla — a sitting MLA from Mangol Puri — lost from Madipur constituency to BJP candidate Kailash Gangwal by a margin of nearly 10,900 votes. Similarly, senior Congress leader Rajesh Lilothia lost from Seema Puri and only secured the third spot. But, in Karol Bagh BJP’s Dushyant Gautam was defeated by AAP’s sitting MLA Vishesh Ravi.