It’s going to be a Gurjar vs Gurjar contest in South Delhi Lok Sabha seat

In 2019, there were 20,67,463 electors in the South Delhi Lok Sabha constituency, of which 12,14,222, or 58.73% cast their vote.

South Delhi Lok Sabha constituency is one of the seven parliamentary seats in the National Capital Territory of Delhi. It was considered a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) citadel with the party winning from this constituency continuously between 1989 and 2004. Top BJP leaders of the time, like Madan Lal Khurana (1989, 1991), Sushma Swaraj (1996, 1998), and Vijay Kumar Malhotra (1999, 2004) retained this seat for the BJP.

However, after its delimitation, in the 2009 Lok Sabha election, Congress candidate Ramesh Kumar defeated BJP’s Ramesh Bidhuri by over 93,000 votes. But in 2014, the former slipped to the third spot while Bidhuri defeated the closest challenger from Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), Col. Devinder Sehrawat, by over 1 lakh votes. The BJP leader retained the seat in 2019 with more than 3.6 lakh votes over Raghav Chadha.

In 2024, the BJP has nominated Ramvir Singh Bidhuri (71) who will take on AAP candidate Sahiram Pehalwan (64), who is supported by the Congress.

Bidhuri is from the Gurjar community and is the Leader of Opposition in Delhi Legislative Assembly. He was the only BJP candidate to win among the 10 assembly segments that comprises South Delhi Lok Sabha seat. He defeated the AAP candidate from Badarpur constituency in Delhi assembly elections, 2020. The rest of the assembly seats went to the AAP.

As a graduate student at Delhi University, Bidhuri joined the BJP-affiliated students’ organisation, Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad. In 1993, he won from Badarpur assembly constituency as a Janata Dal nominee. In the subsequent election of 1998, he lost to an independent candidate but won back Badarpur in 2003 for the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). He has since alternately lost and won from the same seat.

AAP candidate Sahiram represents the Tughlakabad constituency in Delhi assembly, which he has won twice in a row (2015 and 2020), both times as AAP candidate. In 2013, he was elected Deputy Mayor of South Delhi Municipal Corporation. In 2022, the three erstwhile Municipal corporations of South Delhi, North Delhi, and East Delhi were reunified into Municipal Corporation of Delhi. Sahiram too is from the Gurjar community.

In 2019, there were 20,67,463 electors in the South Delhi Lok Sabha constituency, of which 12,14,222, or 58.73% cast their vote. In 2024, elections will be held here along with the six other Lok Sabha constituencies in the sixth phase on May 25.

South Delhi reflects a diverse demography and is among the most densely populated areas of Delhi. Incidentally, following its delimitation, many colonies with affluent residents like Greater Kailash, Hauz Khas, etc. were reorganised. On the other side, it includes Ambedkar Nagar, Kalkaji, Tughlakabad, etc. where there is a mix of affluent, and middle- and lower-income families. Meanwhile, RK Puram houses several government employees as well. It is therefore a mix of people from various spheres of life.

Thus, the constituency’s voting segments predominantly comprise upper-class, urban, semi-rural, slums and resettlement colony dwellers.

With both candidates being from the same community and region in South Delhi, the BJP and the INDIA bloc are vying for a seat where personal relation and outreach will play a part with caste and community equations to influence the electoral outcome.