Delhi Election Result: Hat-trick for Congress but diminished AAP offers a silver lining

The Congress has failed to win a single seat in the last three elections in Delhi. (PTI/File)

The Delhi election results declared on Saturday showed the Congress failing to make a mark in the capital for the third consecutive election. As per the trends made available by the Election Commission of India, the Congress is leading in none of the 70 seats with a vote share of less than 7 percent.

Much of this third consecutive debacle in Delhi -- the party failed to win a seat in the last two elections in the capital -- is attributed to a lackluster campaign by the Congress, with its top leader Rahul Gandhi failing to even turn up at meetings the state unit had arranged for him to address.

Having hesitated to take on the Aam Aadmi Party directly for a little too long, a late flourish proved to be a case of too little too late. The reasons behind the Congress' decline since the defeat of the Sheila Dikshit-led government in 2013 are many, and, possibly the subject of a separate conversation.

For now, the Congress does not appear to be too unhappy with the outcome. None of its leaders have come out to blame the EVMs or the Election Commission of India -- some even conceded defeat and declared that the BJP was forming a government even before the BJP had done so.

Contrast the Congress' response to its performance in Delhi to that following its defeat in Maharashtra and Haryana -- it is stark, and for a reason.

In the AAP's defeat in Delhi, the Congress appears to have found a silver lining and a sense of vengeance. The decline of the AAP, it believes, is its only road to revival in the long term in the Delhi which once was a Congress citadel.

Over the years, the AAP owes much of its existence, and growth over the past decade, to the Congress. It is the anti-corruption movement against the Congress government that led to the formation of the AAP. It was the Congress' defeat that brought it to power in Delhi.

Then, an out-of-form Congress in states where it had a traditional rivalry with the BJP allowed AAP the room to gain a foothold and then expand at the cost of the grand old party.

So, while the AAP may have fared several degrees better than the Congress, the grand old party is content with the fact that the former is out of power in Delhi which was its fountainhead.

Congress insiders strongly believed that knocking out AAP was key to its revival and it was this very realization that led to top Congress leaders including Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra attacked the AAP.

The Congress has argued that the BJP's vote share in the capital remained between 32 percent and 38 percent in the Assembly elections since 1993, and that it did not overlap with the Congress vote.

In 2008, when the party won Delhi for the third consecutive time, its vote share was 40.31 percent, which plunged to 24.55 percent in 2013, under 10 percent in 2015 and just 4.26 percent in 2020.

On the contrary, the AAP's vote share moved from 24.49 percent in 2013 to 54.34 percent in 2015 and was 53.57 percent in 2020.

The Congress would also like to believe that with AAP out of power in Delhi, it would automatically disintegrate since the party is not cadre-based.

Yet, there is nothing that the Congress can take away from the Delhi elections besides the fact that AAP had been knocked out of power. It has gained no seats and not much in terms of vote share either.

Also, the Congress may find itself the subject of much criticism from many in the Opposition INDIA bloc, many of whom had backed the AAP over Congress for the Delhi elections and now hold the grand old party responsible for the BJP's victory in the capital for the first time in 27 years.