2013 Delhi state assembly election

← 2008 4 December 2013 (2013-12-04) 2015 →
All 70 seats in theLegislative Assembly of Delhi 36 seats needed for a majority
Opinion polls
Turnout	66.02% ( 8.42%)
First party Second party Third party   Leader Harsh Vardhan Arvind Kejriwal Sheila Dikshit Party BJP AAP INC Leader since 2012 2012 1998 Leader's seat Krishna Nagar New Delhi New Delhi (lost) Seats before 23 New 43 Seats after 31 28 8 Seat change 8 New 35 Popular vote 2,604,100 2,322,330 1,932,933 Percentage 33.07% 29.5% 24.6% Swing 3.27% New 15.7%   Fourth party Fifth party Sixth party   SAD JD(U) Leader Mayawati Party SAD JD(U) BSP Leader's seat Not Contested Seats before Party did not contest Party did not contest 2 Seats after 1 1 0 Seat change 1 1 2 Popular vote 71,757 68,818 420,926 Percentage 1.0% 0.87% 5.35% Swing n/a 8.69%
Structure of theDelhi Legislative Assembly after the election
Chief Minister before election Sheila Dikshit INC ElectedChief Minister Arvind Kejriwal AAP

This article is part of a series about Arvind Kejriwal
Chief Minister of Delhi 2013–2025 Delhi Council of Ministers Kejriwal I Kejriwal II Kejriwal III Electoral Performance Electoral history Assembly elections 2013 2015 2020 Legislative Assembly Delhi Legislative Assembly Fifth Sixth Seventh Media Swaraj (book) An Insignificant Man Activism Parivartan Jan Lokpal Bill 2011 Indian anti-corruption movement India Against Corruption Controversies Arrest Delhi liquor scam Residence attack Shunglu Committee Swati Maliwal assault
Gallery: Picture, Sound, Video
v t e

TheDelhi Legislative Assembly election was held on 4 December 2013, with the result announced on 8 December resulting in formation of theFifth Legislative Assembly of Delhi.^[1][2]

TheBharatiya Janata Party won a plurality, closely followed byAam Aadmi Party, in the latter party's first election; this resulted in ahung assembly. After the BJP refused to form a government in thehung assembly, theAam Aadmi Party's (AAP)Arvind Kejriwal became chief minister with external support from theIndian National Congress (INC).^[3]

This was one of the first five elections in which theElection Commission of India implemented a "None of the above" (NOTA) voting option, allowing the electorate to register a neutral to people any think vote but not to outright reject candidates.^[4] In a first, theElection Commission of India also appointed Central Awareness Observers, whose main task was to oversee voter awareness and facilitation.^[5]

There were 810 candidates running for office, including 224 independents.^[6]

Alliance/Party				Flag	Symbol	Leader	Seats contested
	NDA		Bharatiya Janata Party			Harsh Vardhan[7]	66[8]	70
			Shiromani Akali Dal			Sukhbir Singh Badal	4[9]
	Aam Aadmi Party					Arvind Kejriwal[10]	70[11]
	Indian National Congress					Sheila Dikshit[12]	70[13]
	Bahujan Samaj Party					Mayawati	69
	Janata Dal (United)					Nitish Kumar	27
	Samajwadi Party					Akhilesh Yadav	25
	Lok Jan Shakti Party					Ram Vilas Paswan	16
	Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam					Vijayakant	11[14]
	Nationalist Congress Party					Sharad Pawar	9
	Shiv Sena					Uddhav Thackeray	9
	Rashtriya Lok Dal					Chudhary Ajit Singh	7
	Indian National Lok Dal					Om Prakash Chautala	2
	LF		Communist Party of India			Sudhakar Reddy	10[15]	19
			Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) Liberation			Dipankar Bhattacharya	4[15]
			Communist Party of India (Marxist)			Prakash Karat	3[15]
			All India Forward Bloc				2[15]
	Social Democratic Party of India						1
	INDEPENDENTS						224

The AAP leaderArvind Kejriwal called the BJP'sHarsh Vardhan the "Manmohan Singh of the BJP" as incapable of stemming the "rot" in Delhi's governance. He added: "We will help the people of Delhi get rid of Congress misgovernance first, and then ensure change at the national level in the Lok Sabha polls." However, Vardhan was supported by the BJP's prime ministerial candidate in the2014 Indian general election,Narendra Modi.^[16] TheHindustan Times suggested that theRajnath Singh-appointed BJP Delhi leader,Vijay Goel, though organisationally competent, lost favour due to his exclusion of established regional leaders in reorganising local units. Singh was still viewed as reluctant to "change horses in mid-stream" but agreed. Modi led the charge, with other party leaders, to have Vardhan as the chief ministerial candidate^[17] and Goel himself agreed to the nomination of Vardhan.^[18] The AAP released its first electoral manifesto.^[19]

Number of seats

Vote share

There were 11,753 polling stations, including the presence ofEVMs, while 630 identified as critical and hypercritical. There were 11.9  million eligible voters, of which 6.6  million were men and 5.3  million were women while there were 405,000 first-time voters. 32,801 Delhi Police personnel and 107 companies of central paramilitary forces were deployed to ensure a peaceful election. Polling stations opened at 8:00 am and turnout was 66%.^[6]

Voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) along with EVMs was used in 1 assembly seat in Delhi elections-New Delhi.^[29][30] Polling stations in Tuglaqabad, Karol Bagh, Trilokpuri and Badarpur reportedly had long waits because EVMs dysfunctioned. In Jungpura, Badli, Krishna Nagar, and Kondli constituencies, some voters complained that their names were on the electoral rolls and that they could not vote.

After voting, party leaders expressed their opinion. Kejriwal said he is confident of a positive result for his party.^[31] Vardhan claimed the BJP was "far ahead" of the INC and Aam Aadmi Party. "I can tell you very categorically that we are far ahead of Congress and the new entrant in Delhi politics. I am 100 percent confident about our victory. I think nobody can make any dent in our vote bank. If there is any contest or fight, it is between the Congress and the new entrant (for the second place)." Dikshit said she had her "fingers crossed" on the outcome, while national party leaderSonia Gandhi said from her Nirman Bhavan polling station: "We will win."^[6] At many places people with disabilities could not vote due to inaccessible polling booths.^[32][33]

In all over 43,000 postal ballots were received, an increase from the last election's 1,600 postal ballots. The Delhi Election Commission announced that 2,000Central Paramilitary Force andDelhi Police personnel were at the vote-counting centers in the city on the day of the result announcement and CCTV cameras and live streaming of proceedings through webcasting, two layers of security cover have been set at all the 14 counting centers. Delhi Chief Electoral Officer Vijay Dev said: "Paramilitary force forms the inner circle of security of centers while adequate numbers of Delhi Police personnel will ensure safety from outside. Counting of votes will start from 8 AM tomorrow and during the first-hour postal ballots will be counted."^[34] The postal ballots were counted before the EVM votes.^[35]

Exit polls showed the BJP in the lead to possibly form a government on its own, followed by the AAP and the incumbent INC in third place; others, in general, were fourth with the BSP following.^[36]

Notably, the INC'sChaudhary Prem Singh lost in the Ambedkar Nagar constituency, he held the seat since 1993 and had not lost a single election in 50 years; however, Ashok Kumar of the AAP won the seat.^[37] Incumbent Chief MinisterSheila Dikshit lost her New Delhi constituency seat to AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal by a margin that was much more than her total votes and winning hardly 500 votes more than the BJP's Vijender Kumar who finished third;^[38] she then submitted her resignation to Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung.^[39]

Summary of results of the 2013 Delhi Legislative Assembly election^[40]

	Political party	Flag	Seats Contested	Won	Net change in seats	% of seats	Votes	Vote %	Change in vote %
	Bharatiya Janata Party		66	31	8	44.3	2,604,100	33.07	3
	Aam Aadmi Party		69	28	New	40.0	2,322,330	29.49	New
	Indian National Congress		70	8	35	11.4	1,932,933	24.55	15
	Janata Dal (United)		27	1	1	1.4	68,818	0.87	New
	Shiromani Akali Dal		4	1	1	1.4	71,757	1	N/A
	Independents		225	1	0	1.4		10	N/A
Total				70	Voters		7,699,800	Turnout: 66%

Former Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit said: "We accept our defeat and we will analyze what went wrong. We respect what the people of Delhi have decided and thank them for supporting us for last 15 years."^[41]

As no party won a majority of the 70 seats in the assembly,^[42] if the necessarycoalition government is not possible, Delhi would be put underpresident's rule until a new election is held within six months. However, the INC, BJP, and AAP have all said they would not seek alliances with each other. The other option was to try to bring in independents; though since there are not enough, the media speculated that the other option would be lured away MLAs from another party (the AAP being the most likely in their analysis).^[43]

As the BJP won 31 seats, while its alliance partner Shiromani Akali Dal won one seat, they gained a plurality and would have the first right to form a new government. However, they declined the offer from Lieutenant-GovernorNajeeb Jung to form a new government citing an inability to obtain a majority. Jung then invited the Aam Aadmi Party to form the government.^[44] Kejriwal wrote to BJP national leaderRajnath Singh and INC national leaderSonia Gandhi for clarification on 18 issues before seeking their support in forming a coalition.

On 9 December, Leader of opposition in Rajya Sabha,Arun Jaitley wrote a blog suggesting that Congress should support AAP to form government in Delhi.^[45] The BJP did not reply and the INC agreed to 16 of the 18 issues and offered its outside support. On 14 December, BJP Chief Ministerial candidateDr. Harsh Vardhan asked AAP to take Congress support and form the government.^[46] The AAP then sought public opinion through a variety of mediums^[47] such as via community meetings, text messages and pamphlets^[48] about whether or not it should take the support of the INC.^[47] AAP then formed a minority government with outside support from the INC.^[49] In a letter to the Lieutenant GovernorNajeeb Jung, the AAP did not however mention that it has the support of the INC.^[50] Jung then sent his recommendations toPresidentPranab Mukherjee.

Kejriwal was then sworn in as 7thChief Minister of Delhi on 28 December, leading theFirst Kejriwal cabinet, the youngest cabinet in Delhi ever.^[51]M. S. Dhir was elected as the speaker of the legislative assembly on 3 January 2014.^[52]

Amongst its first tasks, the AAP initiated a corruption response mechanism in a "durbar";^{[citation needed]} it also retracted theFDI in multi-brand retail that the previous government had sanctioned. Kejriwal said that though this would give consumers more options it has been shown that it "leads to loss of jobs to a very large extent. There is huge unemployment in Delhi and the AAP government does not wish to increase this unemployment. Delhi is not prepared for FDI."^[53] Yet he added that he was not against FDI by itself but that it needed to occur on a case-by-case basis.^[54]

After 49 days, Kejriwal resigned as a chief minister following the failure of the introduction of Delhi'sJan Lokpal Bill in the assembly on 14 February 2014.President's rule was then imposed and the assembly was kept insuspended animation.^[55] Fresh elections were scheduled for early2015.

• First Legislative Assembly of Delhi
• Second Legislative Assembly of Delhi
• Third Legislative Assembly of Delhi
• Fourth Legislative Assembly of Delhi
• Fifth Legislative Assembly of Delhi
• Sixth Legislative Assembly of Delhi

• 2013 State Assembly elections in India
• State Assembly elections in Delhi
• 2010s in Delhi

• CS1: unfit URL
• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Use Indian English from May 2014
• All Wikipedia articles written in Indian English
• Use dmy dates from May 2014
• All articles with unsourced statements
• Articles with unsourced statements from January 2014